User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 30

ILGA 2019 report

https://ilga.org/state-sponsored-homophobia-report

Hi the latest 2019 ilga report is very important and highly big and informative Many lgbt country pages in africa asia and (even americas) need to be updated urhently Take ur time and check and hope u can update the countries Some unapdated even from 2011

There is also the blog erasing 76 Like this just write the name of country and erasing 76 in google like that

Also there is The U.S. Department of State's 2019 Human Rights Report

I would do it happily but i'm focusing much on the translating English LGBT content pages into Arabic all the time and can't much

Thx good luck (no pressure of course, just a suggestion) AdamPrideTN (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Chuukese

Hi kwami, sorry for getting back this late. No, unfortunately, I have no extra-material on Chuukese. It is quite remote from my main area of research. But there is a Bible translation of Chuukese which might be helpful. Bible translations have to be taken of course cum grano salis, but many of them are very idiomatic and represent the natural spoken language in quite a reliable way. –Austronesier (talk) 12:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten

Concerning your recent edit at Template:Same-sex unions, are you certain same-sex marriages performed in the Netherlands are registered as civil unions in Aruba? Do you have any sources to confirm this? Technically, they should be registered as full marriages, as per several court rulings, including a ruling from the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. Jedi Friend (talk) 08:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

From the rights groups I've contacted, you aren't married under local law in those states. True, you can register your marriage, and I suspect that counts for residency, as it does in e.g. Romania, but it doesn't count as a marriage any more than it does in Romania. In Curacao, you supposedly have no rights whatsoever apart from living there. In Aruba, I would *assume* that your marriage counts as a CU rather than as nothing, though I suppose it's possible that you would need to get a local CU for those rights, as you evidently have to do in Estonia. (You can register your marriage in Estonia, but don't get the rights of a CU unless you get one of those as well -- at least according to some reports. But then, you can't actually get a CU in Estonia (or at least you weren't able to for a while), so need to get married abroad in order to have CU-equivalent rights, according to other reports.)

It's like trying to figure out whether a Muslim man with three wives emigrating to the US is still married to any of his wives. We really need better sources for these states, Estonia, Armenia, Cambodia, Japan and a bunch of US tribal govs. If you have RS's for Aruba, not just that there was a court judgement or that people register their marriages, which all agree on, but that ppl actually have full marriage rights, rights that people with local CU's don't, that would be fantastic. — kwami (talk) 12:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm. The court rulings have held that the Dutch marriage certificate has to be fully registered and all of the rights of marriage must be guaranteed, though if local groups say otherwise, I would assume Aruban, Curaçao and Sint Maarten authorities are ignoring these decisions. But, you're right; better sources are certainly needed. Cheers. Jedi Friend (talk) 14:06, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I wrote to the govt ministries of all three countries earlier this year, and haven't received any replies. The only response I got was from a rights group in Curacao, and they say that registration confers no rights there (taxes, medical decisions, etc.). We went back and forth a few times to make sure there wasn't a translation issue, since they were writing in English and it wasn't quite colloquial. I posted their responses somewhere on WP talk, though of course you'd have to write them yourself to verify. For the Estonian group, they said it's all very complicated and hadn't stabilized. Not like the EU ruling, which is reasonably straightforward and everyone seems to have accepted. But then we have similar things going on with Sinaloa, where the MORENA govt just rejected the legislation to implement the SC ruling. — kwami (talk) 23:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Matsés language

Hey Kwami, could you please have a look at Matsés language? The article has been strongly expanded by an IP lately, but unfortunately their writing is rather sloppy and reads non-native-English, and not compatible with Wikipedia MOS, so the article looks like a mess and would need a large amount of copyediting to make it look decent, I fear, and also fact-checking.

Frankly, I've considered reverting the additions wholesale because I feel that at least in such obscure corners of Wikipedia, where few eyes, let alone competent (or even relevant specialist expert) eyes, are watching what's going on, and looking after it, well-meaning outsiders can make articles worse rather than better by adding large amounts of seemingly well-sourced text to them, since it creates so much work that nobody seems willing nor even able to do. I'm also not sure if there might not be a kind of UNDUE going on here, when an obscure language (even to linguists) receives such disproportionately-seeming coverage on Wikipedia, but I'm quite unsure how to proceed in this case. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Comment again if I don't get to this, as I'm not going to do anything now and my 'new messages' icon is gone.

Personally, I don't think that's too much coverage at all. All languages deserve the respect we'd give ones we know, and if other WP language articles are much shorter, then that's a shortcoming in them. The quality and accuracy of the writing is a different matter, of course. E.g., the Pisabo info box is now stranded with no indication of what it's doing in the article. — kwami (talk) 10:54, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Fair; on second glance, the article isn't actually that long, but I'm still not keen on copyediting the whole thing, especially considering that Panoan languages are utterly beyond my competence. The infobox not being in its place was the first thing I noticed too, so I moved it back, and I also restored the section about Pisabo, at least. Thanks for your input. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:10, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Template:Infobox language and Ethnologue

Hi Kwami. {{Infobox language}} generates a named reference for use in language articles. The usual reference generated is for Ethnologue which is often used in the article text. However every year Ethnologue gets updated, and every year the language articles start showing errors of the form "Cite error: The named reference e18 was invoked but never defined (see the help page)." in big red type as here. If there are only a few problems I fix them by updating the article text to match the new Ethnologue reference, but I can access the site only a few times before I am locked out. Is there some solution to this annual problem? I fixed a similar problem with {{Canada census}} by making sure it continued to export references for older censuses, but this doesn't seem applicable here. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:44, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@StarryGrandma: yeah, it is a pain. But it was done intentionally. Before that, ppl would ref Ethn, and often after a few years the ref would no longer support the claim, because Ethn had been updated in the meantime and the WP article had not. E.g. we'd say there were X number of speakers, with Ethn as a ref, but if you checked the ref, you'd see twice that many -- or half. But verifying all the refs in every language article every year is just too big a job -- it would never get done. (I wouldn't do it, not after cleaning up WP once!, and you might be one of the few other ppl working on it.) So now we generate refs to specific editions of Ethn. Of course, for the info box, which is easy to monitor, population figures may be updated when a new edition of Ethn comes out (when I was more active, I would do it every article each time), and editors making such quick updates often don't bother to check the rest of the article for cross refs to the old edition. I don't know what we could do to improve the situation, though. If we didn't enable the cross-ref tag, then at first we'd end up with duplicate refs, and then later it wouldn't be so obvious that our cited material was dated. At least the cite error is a warning that something is wrong. A simple fix would mean no warning, which IMO would be worse. (E.g. in the info box we'd ref one population estimate, and in the body of the article a different, older estimate -- that happens all the time.) Do you have any ideas? — kwami (talk) 02:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I recognize that keeping whole categories of articles up to date is a difficult task and it is good that people try. At least censuses are done every 10 years instead of annually. After looking at the Infobox language subpages I am going to replace <ref name=e18 /> with <ref name=e18>{{E18|iso code}}</ref> or <ref name=e18>{{E18|iso code|name}}</ref> when I run into things like this and can't get into Ethnologue. (If a number has been updated in the infobox but not in the text I can use the infobox number and source to fix it.) This is not ideal but keeps away editors who like to clean up all of Category:Pages with broken reference names by just removing the broken references. StarryGrandma (talk) 15:35, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@StarryGrandma: Sorry, didn't see your comment. Yeah, that sounds like a good solution. — kwami (talk) 03:50, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

File:Modern Mongol calligraphy.jpg listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Modern Mongol calligraphy.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. CptViraj (📧) 11:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

File:Shogi Yagura defense.png missing description details

Dear uploader: The media file you uploaded as:

• File:Shogi Yagura defense.png

is missing information on its image description page, which would help other contributors make make better use of the image, and make that page more informative to readers.

If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors. Please also consider updating other files you created or uploaded, You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log.

If you have any questions, please see Help:Image page. Thank you.

 ★  Bigr Tex 20:28, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Pahawh la.png

The file File:Pahawh la.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Superseded by File:Pahawh la glossed.png

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:37, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Pahawh yu.png

The file File:Pahawh yu.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Superseded by File:Pahawh yu glossed.png

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:37, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Category:Pondicherry templates has been nominated for discussion

Category:Pondicherry templates, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:24, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

LGBT updates

http://www.equalityontrial.com/2019/06/25/625-open-thread/#idc-container

https://mobile.twitter.com/lgbtmarriage

https://m.facebook.com/nelfa.aisbl/

Are one of the best sites woth sources that provides daily updates about lgbt rights (some that go unedited for weeks)

I would advice you to check them from time to time for updates

I would do what i can happily but i'm focusing much on the translating English LGBT content pages into Arabic all the time and can't much

Thx good luck (no pressure of course, just a suggestion) AdamPrideTN (talk) 08:55, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@AdamPrideTN: thanks! One of them had a good ref for Estonia, which we've been trying to figure out for years now. Good enough that an editor that I'd been fighting with over it has accepted the change. — kwami (talk) 01:17, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia edit number 399,993

According to my global account info, the edit I just made on WP-en was number 399,993, which according to George Carlin is the number of words you can say on television.

— kwami (talk) 06:47, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit 400,000

This is edit 400,000. Not so active any more, so thought I'd keep track of when. — kwami (talk) 22:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Page rename discussion

Hi Kwamikagami,

I proposed a rename for Same-sex marriage under United States tribal jurisdictions and started a discussion and would appreciate if you added your thoughts to the discussion.

Thanks, -TenorTwelve (talk) 22:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Request to unprotect Maltese language

May I request to unprotect the page Maltese language. According to logs, the page has been semi-protected for more than ten years. —Jencie Nasino (talk) 01:15, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Help please about Tunisia lgbt page

Hello sir sorry to bother u but i need ur help

So ok if u will ckeck LGBT rights in Tunisia page u will find and please read the history and the history and talk page history of that (Personal attack removed) user by the name moneysoendethe page and other sas perfectly fine till he comes and starts deleting sourced content and all

Please read revert if u can his editq or restore my edits that are sourced and the true nature of the legal dituation there and try talk to him telli'g to (Personal attack removed) that putting vigilante attacks are tolerated is not what the law says and is a biased unsourced point of u

If u didnt find my argument please ask me so i can give u to them but u can fi'd it in the edits and his talk pahe and contribution history

Thx

If not cleaer tell me how can i make it more clearer for u thx AdamPrideTN (talk) 00:50, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Sure. Give me a couple hours to check it out. — kwami (talk) 00:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I deleted what both of you deleted. Torture and vigilantism don't appear to be prescribed penalties, so I removed those from the boxes. And IMO the list of rights orgs is too much detail for the lead. — kwami (talk) 03:03, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Kwamikagami don't fall into his drama and personal attacks. He has been at me attacking, assuming bad faith and being overall very unpolite about edit he disagrees with, especially Tunisia pages. I advised him to not edit if his neutral point of view would be distracted by his own personal feelings, but I see he has ignored that and continued wp:EW with wp:DE. Please see my comments as well, I have undid your edit because I have added and noted where in the sources these points are supported. Please see them and then if you still disagree feel free to talk in the talkpage before editing. I will continue to consider your points and then if we still have different ideas on how we should address vigilante executions in the penalty boxes, maybe a compromise edit is in order. Either way I'm keeping an open mind, unlike how Adam continues to portray me out of whatever unprofessional negative feelings he has towards me. Thanks again. Moneyspender (talk) 05:41, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't responding to allegations of personal attacks, but took a look at the sources. Anal testing may be allowed as evidence, but it's not a penalty mandated by law, so whether someone considers it torture is irrelevant. And "no one's answered my question yet" is not evidence that Tunisian forces back vigilantism as a means to attack the LGBT community. (As they do e.g. in Chechnya.) If you have actual evidence, that would be a different matter. — kwami (talk) 05:48, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Kabiye language

Saddened to see the "semi retired" banner — hope you have a change of mind.

An editor who has been absent for a while made a valiant effort here to resolve the glut of sources in the article, added by another editor also absent for some time. Do we really need all those sources (wrapped up as single entries or not)? It is not as if anyone is going to dispute that such studies have been made to warrant such an ironcast twentyfold proof of their existence. In fact, even the breaking up of linguistics into its various areas of study is already an overkill. Unless there is a specific reason why a certain area is not studied (in which case that would be important to mention), it is natural thal all would be, without any need for the lengthy string of disciplines. Surely this falls under WP:NOTREPOSITORY? The article has been copied (translated) to the Portuguese Wikipedia and I want to consult people on both sides before attempting something on the ptwiki. Thanks for your time, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 21:01, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Rui Gabriel Correia: I agree making the refs double as a repository is inappropriate. Best to put such info in a 'further reading' section or biblio, where it can be dealt with on its merits vs being a link farm. If there's a lot of high-quality material, it can be difficult to narrow it down, but more often there are a few high-quality sources with broad coverage, and a lot of narrow studies that aren't relevant for a general-audience article and can be removed. If there really are a lot of good, broad sources, I see nothing wrong with having a lengthy biblio. But that's not the norm. — kwami (talk) 03:10, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Kwami. Will open themone by one and sift out the primary ones. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 08:03, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Last edits about LGBT rights in Jamaica

Hello, mr @Kwamikagami: Sorry for the bother U are more experienced than me in this I am not mentionning any name or calling anyone or atgacking him please However, Would u be so kind and check LGBT rights in Jamaica history page and recent edits and see what can be done, So basically its true Jamaica used to be very homophobic, now the situation chznged a bit although not much, Jamaica now has gay prides, and legal challenges, and the pinknews source saying its a life imprisonment is utterly wrong i never use it or use that site, The only one is barbados there and in both its clear the laws are not enforced And again the law is clear about what it says. Thank you, Cheers!! AdamPrideTN (talk) 10:50, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Mr. @Kwamikagami: Sorry for the bother, would u please check again the latest edits on the page again, and all sources state that jamaica is no longer homophobic as it was, a simple search of google, for Jamaica no longer homophobic, will give many sources, especially the Guardian one.

Thank you AdamPrideTN2 (talk) 23:48, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation of new Jovian moon names

Hi! Do you know how the names of the five newly named Jovian moons (Ersa, Pandia, Eupheme, Philophrosyne, and Eirene) should be pronounced? Double sharp (talk) 07:18, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Looking them up. Our article Pandion was wrong -- that's a long iota in Greek. — kwami (talk) 07:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Double sharp (talk) 15:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Same-sex marriage in the United States map: Counties vs tribal nations, tribal nations that perform

Hi Kwami,

I was wondering if we could possibly make a distinction on the File:Same-sex marriage in the United States.svg same-sex marriage in the United States map between counties refusing to perform same-sex marriage and tribal nations that do not perform. I also am wondering if there is a way that tribes that do perform same-sex marriage could also be shown on the map. Currently, if a tribal nation performs, it gets blanked into the blue and my concern is that some who see the map might not get the nuance that some tribes recognize and some tribes do not; that some of these are counties, not tribal nations. I don't want people to get the perception that no tribes perform, thereby hurting people's perceptions of Indian Country. The counties could be with a different color; for tribal nations that perform, it could be noted either by another color, such as light blue, or it could be noted by an outline of the reservation. Or they could be "blanked into the blue" as they currently are. I'm open to debate on it.

Though I'm not sure what the end product would look like on the second request. Would it make said Nations look like Nations that do not perform?

Thanks,

-TenorTwelve (talk) 01:04, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that we don't have adequate sources. Of the ca. 500 'Tribes', do you even have a ref for which ones have their own marriage laws? We'd end up leaving the majority of those blank as 'unknown'. As it is, the list is certain to be incomplete. The ones that are there are either ones that have been in the news, or where we've been able to find their marriage laws. But I suspect that in a lot of cases the issue hasn't been decided yet, so we'd have that category in addition to 'don't know', if we could even tell them apart. It would be an absolute mess. As for distinguishing the Alabama counties, that would mean adding a color/category that doesn't exist on any of the other maps. Do you have any suggestions? (Light blue doesn't work, that has a different meaning.) — kwami (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Source for pronunciation

A source that says how "papaveraceous" is pronounced is not a source for how "Papaveraceae" is pronounced. As an example, consider how "audacious" and "audacity" are pronounced. In the first, the "da" is as in "day", in the second as in "dash". A change of ending matters. You need a source for the word itself, not a related word. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Used MW. Makes no difference, they're both /AY/, though there's some US/UK diff. You could've done that yourself, of course. Better to add content than delete it. — kwami (talk) 20:28, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I myself am never willing to add a pronunciation for the scientific name of a plant. We have discussed this on multiple occasions at various organism wikiprojects; for plants, see e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive67#Pronunciation of plant family names. The ending "-aceae" is pronounced in at least five different ways by English-speaking botanists active in WP:PLANTS: "-ay-see", "-ay-see-eye", "-ay-see-ay", "-ay-see-ee", "-ah-kay-eye". In most discussions, the first is the most commonly used or heard, but it does vary from department to department. The definitive source for Botanical Latin, Stearn, can be used to source the last. On the other hand, I won't remove a properly sourced pronunciation, but I just wish it came with a caveat that the pronunciation of scientific names varies greatly. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

The last is Latin (well, an attempt at Latin), not English. "-ay-see-eye" is a hybrid. You get the same patterns with astronomical bodies: "Io" is EYE-oh for some, EE-oh for others. We do have a note in some of the astro articles that pronunciation varies by how classical the speaker is trying to be, or by their training in the classics. I'd certainly be for doing something similar for biological nomenclature. We could even come up with a simple fn template if you like. The way I figure it, anyone who knows enough Latin to have a preferred pronunciation is going to use that form anyway. In which case, all that matters is which vowels are long, so they know where to assign the stress, and that doesn't vary between systems so they can use any pronunciation as a guide as long as it's not actually irregular (in which case we should supply the regular form as well). I try to add the most anglicized pronunciation because that's the one that is the least straightforward, and the others can generally be generated from it and the spelling. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

The most anglicized pronunciation of "-aceae" is surely "-ace-ee"/"-ay-see", but even if actually the most common, this is rarely if ever attested in reliable sources. I can only add that I have never heard "Papaveraceae" pronounced /pəpævəˈreɪsiiː/, although I mix with many English botanists. /pəpɑːvɜːrˈeɪsiː/ would be my (British) pronunciation as nearly as it can be represented in Wikipedia's use of IPA. In general, a botanical family "Xaceae" has the "X" part pronounced reasonably closely to the way the type genus is pronounced. MW's /pəpævəˈreɪsiiː/ implies that Papaver would be pronounced /pəˈpævər/ or /pæˈpævər/ which I've never heard, but may be an attempt at a classical pronunciation or be North American. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, some people would pronounce it as a compound, "Papaver-aceae". There's a general, but optional, rule for Latinate words in English that, when you add suffixes in a way that doesn't change the stress assignment in the root, that originally long vowels may be pronounced short. So the OED keeps the long AY vowel of Papaver while MW shortens it. It's not a classical pronunciation in the sense of trying to be authentic to the Latin, but rather following the conventions of literary English. AFAIK, that's not a US/UK thing either, but is related to trisyllabic laxing. (Well, maybe it's partly a US/UK thing, since there tends to be more disyllabic laxing in the US, e.g. in 'patent' and 'lever' -- though I vaguely recall other words with the opposite distribution.)

So, anyway, no, it doesn't imply the genus is pronounced *pəˈpævər. That would still be /pəˈpeɪvər/ because the penult is a long vowel (Latin papāver), and so stressed, and in an open syllable, and so 'long' in English. — kwami (talk) 23:54, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Kwami are you ever going to cite all of your additions about what is and is not in equilibrium?

Because I have no idea what you're basing this on and it will be hard to track down them all. Serendi^podous 22:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You mean for DPs? There are only two that are established to be in HE, Ceres and Pluto, per our sources in those articles. — kwami (talk) 23:01, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

And all the references to moons, in the List of Solar System objects by size, the List of possible dwarf planets Serendi^podous 00:56, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

The ref to the moons is repeated several places in the Saturn articles. — kwami (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Luna not in HE?

what is with Earth's moon being put in the NOT equilibrium list for...?Joshoctober16 (talk) 21:56, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Because that's what the refs say, as I already told you. If you can debunk the ref, fine. Otherwise you're just edit-warring. — kwami (talk) 22:14, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

i mean uh i cant realy ... go to the ref tougth to see if it says it or not , is there any proof of it , like ref link , the ref you posted makes this more confusing , somtimes books can lie or do a typo so... im trying to be sure, base on how HE works somthing is severely wrong , if the moon isnt HE then so is almost evreything that is smaller... that is the big issue.Joshoctober16 (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This was published just 5 years ago in Nature, in an article working out the shape of the moon, which concluded that it froze out of equilibrium at approx. 32 Earth radii (it's now at 60). I actually got it from a reliable 2ary source that cited it, so it's even got that going for it. If it were wrong, Nature would've retracted it by now and I doubt ppl would still be citing it. It's far more likely that I misinterpreted it than that it's wrong, but you'd need to explain to me where I went wrong.

As for your second point, no, that doesn't follow. Luna has a solid rock mantle with a small metal core. The other large moons have ice mantles with rock cores, and may have global sub-surface oceans as well. I think the only other solid-rock ellipsoidal moon is Io, and that's melted by tidal forces. Europa's mostly rock as well, but we know it has an ocean, which by definition (it's liquid water) is in HE. So it could easily be the case that Luna has frozen out of equilibrium but that, say, Triton and Pluto have not. — kwami (talk) 01:17, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

wait is this what you could be talking about? , i mean ya i know some objects can be frozen into its round state but... if the moon isnt in HE then what about objects like Pluto and ceres?Joshoctober16 (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

No, I was talking about the source that I used. I don't know why you don't just look it up. Your ref is interesting too, but it's several years older and doesn't comment on the more recent work published in Nature. — kwami (talk) 01:31, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

ok at first i honestly tought you where a troll , but now im starting to just get confused , the article's seem to be conderdicting there selfs... meaning some have to be wrong... ive made a reddit thread about the moon HE talk , could you try to post what it states in the book? https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/d4tby2/about_the_moon_being_in_hydrostatic_equilibrium/ Joshoctober16 (talk) 01:30, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

BTW, Brown and others have noted that the size required for body to be in HE depends on its composition. The smallest possible rocky DP will be larger than the smallest possible icy DP. They also seem to have grossly underestimated the pressures that ice can withstand at those temperatures (e.g. see Grundy et al.). Early discussions of what could be a DP almost never took into account the fact that a body could relax into HE and later freeze out, though this did come up with Vesta and Phoebe. — kwami (talk) 01:38, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

wait hold up... is that ref a link? cause for me it isnt i cant click it there is litterly no way for me to see what your ref is,that is why me and others kept asking for a ref if this is true. Joshoctober16 (talk) 01:34, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

No, it's not a link. But you can copy the article title and do a search for it. You'll get a number of hits, some of which will be online copies of the article. I don't understand what's difficult here.

As for what the ref is, the ref is the ref. Author, date, article title, journal, volume, page numbers -- what more do you expect? — kwami (talk) 01:41, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

ive found it by some one in reddit and well this is very interesting , but i feel this needs to be talk more about , the article seems to point out stuff you see in a non HE body but the same time seem to show hints of HE? and i dont see it saying it is or isnt, this has now become a bigger question of why did no one ever talk about this?

its stated the tidal bulding would of been gone if it was HE but that it is getting affected by the gravity the same time in a strange middle range, i suggest that whatever you put it as , HE or not HE that you at least put disputed , that would at least be reasonable. Joshoctober16 (talk) 01:50, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

It could be that the crust froze out of HE at ca. 32 earth radii but that the mantle is still in HE. That would seem to be an ambiguous situation. I don't recall the article saying anything like that, though. Your book ref also mentioned that the moon was not in a HE shape, and discussed the difficulties of explaining this. The Nature article does explain it, or at least tries to. As for saying it's "disputed", we'd need a RS that it's disputed. Us not understanding a ref isn't the same thing as a fact being disputed by the scientific community, not at all. Now, if you want to run this by Wikiproject astronomy and have them explain how I've misunderstood the article, that would be fine. But that wouldn't make it disputed either -- it would just make me wrong. — kwami (talk) 02:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Also, for the articles we mention this in other than Moon itself, we're mostly comparing dwarf/satellite planets that may or may not be in HE. Other than perhaps Ceres, all we have to go on is the shapes of their crusts. So if we're going to argue that the Moon really is in HE because its mantle is (if it turns out that's the case), then how can we discuss whether any other mid-sized body in the Solar System is in HE? All the ones that are in equilibrium shape could have frozen solid after they spun down, so it looks like they're still in HE, while for any that aren't in an equilibrium shape we could argue that they're really in HE but it's just invisible. It would make the concept utterly useless for classifying minor planets at our current state of knowledge. It may well be that the concept is useless for classification, of course, but I'd want some good sources that a body with a non-HE shape can be in HE, just as a body with an HE shape can be not in HE. — kwami (talk) 02:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Kazakhstan

Regarding the same-sex marriage map for Europe:

While I have mixed thoughts on removing other countries so the map only shows European countries, if we are only showing European countries, Kazakhstan is a European country, specifically, a transcontinental country in Europe and Asia. Note that Kazakhstan is listed as a European country on the LGBT rights in Europe page and the page for Europe. Would you mind adding Kazakhstan to the map?

Thanks,

-TenorTwelve (talk) 09:22, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Ethnologue as a source

Hi Kwami. I came across a user using ethnologue extensively (Re here) and seem to recall a discussion about whether it was a reliable source or not. Any ideas? --regentspark (comment) 23:28, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Hey @RegentsPark: I would discourage over-reliance on Ethn. I wrote a bit about it here, and that's been up for several years now (a decade, maybe?), so it doesn't seem that others disagree.

I wouldn't use Ethn. at all for classification, as even they don't know where half their classifications come from. Any time the Ethn. classification occurs in the body of a WP article, I'd delete it, unless there's some controversy or s.t. that makes it notable. If you want a quick and easy general source for classification, use Glottolog (though specialists may disagree on specific points). I'd be careful with Ethn. population figures too, as my essay details, though I'm a hypocrite in that I generally use Ethn. without much thought simply because it's so much easier that trying to find and evaluate a bunch of other sources -- especially when people are cherry-picking sources to inflate the figure. If you want to be professional about it, I'd take a look at the source Ethn. got the figure from. Sometimes you'll see surprises. If they don't give a source, you should be cautious. And although Glottolog doesn't give population estimates, they do provide a lot of sources, some of which will have estimates (though often dated, of course).

For details such as dialects, social standing, whether a name in pejorative, etc., Ethn. really isn't reliable. (Neither is Glottolog for dialects: their dialect stuff (any names in italics) is simply a mirror for MultiTree, which is an undergrad student project and generally a horrible source.) Or maybe I should say, Ethnologue is a mix of very reliable information with completely spurious claims, and it's hard to tell the difference. Often someone will write in to Ethn. with a comment, and Ethn. will add it to the entry, but you have no way of knowing who said it, how accurate they were, or even if they later changed their mind. If you know about some obscure language, look it up in Ethn., and you will likely find a number of errors, sometimes quite egregious ones. But if you're curious about a claim you can't confirm, write in to SIL and ask. They'll often have a record in their DB.

It's easy to criticize Ethn., but it wasn't intended to be a linguistic reference in the first place. It was just a rough in-house guide to which peoples needed bible translations. Thus it wasn't terribly important to get all the details exactly right, and sometimes the original writers filled in the blanks just by guessing. What's shameful is that linguists relied on it for so long because they had nothing better, which is ridiculous. It's hard to take linguistics seriously as a science when something like the LSA couldn't be bothered to put together a comprehensive list of the languages that form the basis of their field. So every time I get annoyed with some error in Ethn., I gotta remind myself it's not their fault the linguistic community is so feckless. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Kwami. This, and the essay, are very useful. --regentspark (comment) 01:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Updated Indian Languages

Hi @Kwamikagami: I have updated all the Indian languages figures as per Ethnologue 2019 source kindly correct it if I have done any wrong. Changes made Hindi, Bengali language, Tamil language, Kashmiri language, Marathi language, Punjabi language, Gujarati language, Telugu language, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia language, Nepali language. Also ensure that you don't remove the L2 speakers data as it would help people understand the native speakers and second language speakers.Thanks--Caseasauria (talk) 07:06, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Ethn. doesn't match their source for Hindi. I don't know if that's a typo if they're going of s.t. else, but I rv'd it as unconfirmed. — kwami (talk) 07:19, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Semitic people move

Hi, could you revert the move you did in that article? It is controversial and needs a consensus first. Open a move request in the talk page please. Also what's that () at the end?--SharabSalam (talk) 05:45, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

It's not controversial. The Arabs, Jews, Chaldeans and Ethiopians are not a single ethnicity. — kwami (talk) 06:03, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay can you at least remove the (). It seems like if you made a typo?. I am not sure but what does () mean?--SharabSalam (talk) 08:45, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, that was an error. I've put in a request to fix it. It should be done soon. — kwami (talk) 21:03, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Finns

Your recent work on Finnic people created a disambiguation page. As a result, we now have a problem at Template:Ethnic groups in Europe. Could you please fix that link to the disambiguation page, as I assume that you know what group of Finns to point to. The Banner talk 09:10, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Sure. Sorry I didn't get to it last night.

Going through it today, a lot of links to "Finnic peoples" were intended for the Volga Finns or others, not the Baltic. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

As I understand it,

resonances are not arithmetically exact fractions of other planets' orbits; they librate around a specific fraction and, over time, average out that fraction. Serendi^podous 13:18, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Finnic peoples

Hello, your redirect from Finnic peoples to Baltic Finns was without consensus - You did not ask for any feedback on this on the talk page. As a result, I am quite bothered by this. This topic has been discussed previously in length on the talk page of the article. There were specific reasons why the article was called Finnic peoples, not Baltic Finns. If you think "Baltic Finns" are a subgroup of "Finnic peoples", not a synonym, then please provide reliable academic references for that. All academic sources I have read so far treat finnic peoples and baltic finns as synonyms, not separate groups. Blomsterhagens (talk) 20:37, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blomsterhagens: There are plenty of refs, as you can see w a simple Google search. Also, a large number of the links from WP articles to "Finnic peoples" were intended for the Volga Finns, or else where ambiguous between the Baltic, Volga and Permians, and no-one ever bothered to clean them up. These included articles on ethnography, history, religion, genetics, etc. Whoever wanted to change the definition of "Finnic" should have at least taken the responsibility to clean up the mess they left behind. I gave it a try, and redirected over a hundred articles, but there are still a couple dozen links to 'Finnic peoples' where I couldn't determine what the scope was supposed to be because our sources are ambiguous. I think history and genetics are probably the worst culprits for not defining what they mean by "Finnic", but in many cases they seem to mean something other than Baltic.

Given the mess we had, and the ambiguity of so many sources, IMO it's problematic to restrict "Finnic" to any one definition. Doing so will just cause confusion for editors using sources that use a different definition.

With linguistics, it seems to be more reasonable to have the Balto-Finnic languages at Finnic languages -- and indeed I think I'm the one who moved the article there -- because the linguistic sources we use for our articles usually (though not always) define the scope of what they mean by "Finnic". — kwami (talk) 20:40, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

But there is a lot of content on that page that talks about Finnic people in general, not just the people living around the Baltic Sea. In that case it would have made sense to update the definition of the article and include Volga Finns as a subgroup, not carpet rename the entire article. Now all of the content on that article would have to be checked, if the source meant baltic finns or finnic peoples - and the rest would have to be deleted. "Plenty of refs" is not how we decide what to name an article on wikipedia. See the talk page on the article above - "Finnic peoples" clearly has more references in academic literature than "Baltic Finns". And again - this is a HUGE change, affecting many people. It is not polite at all to do such a redirect without any discussion on the talk page. Blomsterhagens (talk) 20:57, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but they can mean two different things. "German people" get more hits than "Germanic peoples", but that doesn't mean we should rename the latter. Also, we have separate articles on the Volga Finns, Permians and Saami. It would be weird to not have an article on the Baltic Finns, and that's clearly what many people were understanding the article to be (e.g. check the categories). If you want to merge the articles, that's fine by me, or if you want to split off the generic stuff to the 'Finnic' article and leave the specific stuff to Baltic, Volga, Permian etc., that would be fine too (and probably better, give the length of the articles). But not having an article on the Balto-Finnic peoples, when we have hundreds of incoming links, would be quite confusing. I suppose we could have a stub that essentially says 'the Baltic Finns aren't worth a WP article', as you are effectively suggesting, but that would hardly be encyclopedic.

And really, if the current article is so badly written that you can't tell what it's talking about, then it desperately needs rewriting. We shouldn't move it to an ambiguous name because we don't know what the scope is supposed to be. I'm happy to have a generic Finnic article in addition to a Balto-Finnic article. I'd be fine with the Balto-Finnic article being called "Finnic" if we were consistent across WP and could clean things up to support that. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

What academic sources are you basing your conclusions on? You seem to think that "Finnic peoples" and "Baltic Finns" are not synonyms. Whereas all the literature I've read - example - treats them as synonyms. And if there is a problem with many links across WP using a less-used synonym for the page (which is not a problem at all btw), then the solution is to rename the links - not rename the article. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Check the incoming links to Finnic peoples. Can you tell what they're supposed to be? Many of them characterize the Finnic peoples as Siberian. And that's after I renamed dozens of "Finnic" links to Volga Finns or Permians.

Also, if you think 'Finnic' and 'Balto-Finnic' are synonyms, why were you having trouble figuring out whether the article covered all the Finnic peoples or just the Baltic Finns, and think the article would need to be split? — kwami (talk) 21:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I used logical deduction as an example to respond to your reasoning for renaming the article. I do not have a problem with figuring it out, because I see the two as synonyms. These are not different terms. The Volga Finns are not Finnic. They are Uralic. The term comes from linguistics. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:27, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, the ideal solution would be to rename the links. But, as I explained above, many of the sources are ambiguous, so what should they be renamed to? And given the many many ambiguous sources, who's going to police all new links that people add in the future? It's obvious no-one ever tried, before I cleaned things up. And since I won't be policing the 'links here' list, it's likely that no-one will. (Before you volunteer, remember that you'll need to police it as long as Wikipedia exists, or can hand the job off to someone with the dedication to do that.) Thus using an ambiguous name for a narrower scope will just lapse back into confusion. Regardless of whether we like the name, 'Baltic Finns' at least has the benefit that the reader can tell what it's talking about. Better to have a disliked but clear title than an article that's so confused in scope as to be useless to our readers. I'd be happy to have some other name, but it needs to be functional. — kwami (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not understand at all how it makes sense to rename an article to something which is clearly wrong, to solve a problem with inter-WP linking. This is not the right way of approaching this. If there were 1000s of links in Wikipedia linking to the Finland article as Finlandia, would we rename Finland to Finlandia? Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:25, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

But neither 'Finnic' nor 'Balto-Finnic' are wrong. A closer analogy would be whether to name it 'Finland' or the 'Republic of Finland'. If there were several polities that were named 'Finland', and hundreds of sources used the name 'Finland' to mean something other than the republic (if, say, the word 'Finland' were commonly used to mean the non-Swedish parts of the republic, plus Karelia, Lapland and the Volga basin), then it might make sense to move 'Finland' to 'Republic of Finland'. Especially if many sources used in our articles were so ambiguous that we couldn't tell which 'Finland' they were referring to. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Again: Volga Finns are not Finnic. Their language forms a separate subdivision in the Uralic language family. The entire list you now have on the Finnic peoples page is wrong, because Saami people, Permians and Volga Finns are not Finnic. None of them speak Finnic languages. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:36, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

'Again'? You never said that. And now that you have, it's clear you don't know what you're talking about. The Finns and Estonians are Uralic too, to the extent that 'Uralic' has any ethnological meaning at all. As to whether the others speak Finnic languages, according to some sources they do. But that's a question of linguistic classification, which is largely irrelevant to which peoples are "Finnic". Just the fact that you called them the "Volga Finns" is an admission that they're called "Finns" in the lit. So, when some source says "Finns", who are they referring to? How do we tell? And how do we police WP to ensure that all the links go to the correct Finnic article? — kwami (talk) 21:43, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I phrased my previous comment in a wrong way and corrected it. You are now answering to the wrong comment. Yes finns and estonians are uralic as well. "Finnic" does not mean "Finn". These are not synonyms. It's a confusing terminology but that's what we are dealing with here. You should not be editing on topics you do not understand. Volga Finns, Permians and Saami people are not Finnic. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:45, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Please revert your changes to reflect the article as it was before. The problem with wrong linking inside wikipedia or the issue of it being unclear what "Finnic" means, needs to then be handled separately and I'm willing to help on that. The current changes were just factually incorrect. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:42, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

No, I'm not going to sabotage Wikipedia because you don't like something. As for helping, are you going to dedicate the rest of your life to policing the links, and pass that responsibility on to your heirs when you die? The current name may not reflect your definition of the word, but that doesn't may it "factually incorrect". And again, I'd be perfectly happy to have the article at some other name, but it needs to be unambiguous so as to not regenerate the problems that needed clean-up. If have a reasonable alternative, including a dab like "Finnic peoples (...)", please share. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Please find an academic source claiming that saami people, permians or volga finns are finnic. Let's continue from there. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

No, I'm not going to waste my time. You can go a little work. Once again (it's annoying to keep having to repeat myself), you can check the incoming links for the sources. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I did. Did not find any. Since it's you who renamed an entire article and then created a new article for Finnic peoples, listing information that is factually wrong, then the least you can do is find a source to back up your claims. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:54, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

What do you mean you "didn't find any"? That can only mean you didn't bother to look. If you're not going to make even a modicum of effort, then I'm done wasting my time with you. — kwami (talk) 21:57, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I did not find any academic sources, claiming that saami people, permians or volga finns are finnic peoples. If you can find one, then please provide it or revert your changes. And check your attitude. You're changing entire terminologies with zero sources and without discussing this on the talk page before. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:59, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello again. The traditional classification is also clearly shown on the Uralic languages page. The Volga Finns belong to the Finno-Volgaic group, not the Finnic group. Also the permians and the saamis belong to a separate group. "Finnic" is a highly specific group, focused only around the tribes in northeastern Europe. Both Finnic peoples and the Saamis are grouped in the Finno-Lappic group. Blomsterhagens (talk) 15:39, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Map of Finnic peoples

Another clear source, this time from the University of Tartu is here, map 97. It clearly marks the areas of the Finnic peoples. It also clearly notes that the Finnic people are often also called "Baltic Finns", thus again confirming that these two terms are synonyms. Blomsterhagens (talk) 15:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit: *If* some sources group these peoples differently, then that should be covered on the main Finnic peoples article as a subtopic. But the article itself should *not* have been renamed just because inter-WP linking is incorrect in places. Also, maybe as another solution, there can be a Finnic peoples page and a Finnic peoples (disambiguation) page. Blomsterhagens (talk) 15:58, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

No, the map doesn't mean that at all, it just means that they're alt names, which we already note. Let me ask you this: *Why* are they called "Baltic Finns"? It should be obvious -- to distinguish them from the non-Baltic Finns, e.g. the Volga Finns, Permians, Saami and other peoples who've also been called 'Finnic'. I don't know why you don't just follow the links to the dozens of our refs that use "Finnic" differently than you do. Yes, many sources, esp. Finnish sources, use "Finnic" just as you describe it. We already say that in the article. But why you think that finding more such sources will somehow make the other sources magically disappear is beyond me.

The fact that you're still hedging with "if there are sources" means that you still haven't read even the leads of the articles that you've edited. The ignorance of a non-reader is not a convincing argument. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

SSM in NI

As I read the law passed, if NI gets its act together on Monday, October 21st, then a good chunk of this bill including the Marriage Equality is N&V. The chance the NI Executive gets its act together is tiny, but not zero, IMO.

The law says by Monday, which as I read it means that at the end of today it takes effect. Yeah, not a zero chance, but since they're not convening today not enough to worry about either. — kwami (talk) 03:29, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Map description translation into Russian

Hi. Could you help me with the translation of the colour description under the maps from russian articles about same-sex marriage? In the articles "Однополый брак" and "Однополые браки в США" you inserted maps with incorrect translation of the colour description. The meaning of the translation does not quite correspond to the original in English. Probably there was used automatic translation.

Under this map [File:World marriage-equality laws (up to date).svg],

— the line “Ограниченное признание браков за границей” should be replaced by “Ограниченное признание иностранных браков”.

Under this map [File:Same-sex marriage in the United States.svg],

— the line “Гомосексуальное признание брака в Соединенных Штатах” should be replaced by “Правовой статус однополых браков в Соединённых Штатах”;

— the line “Однополые браки заключены” should be replaced by “Заключаются однополые браки”;

— the line “Признание иностранных однополых браков” should be replaced by “Однополые браки признаются, но не заключаются”;

— the line “Нет признания (тире: смешанная юрисдикция)” should be replaced by “Однополые браки не признаются (полосы: смешанные юрисдикции)”.

I will be grateful for the help. Shinkai20 (talk) 15:17, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix. Did I get it everywhere I needed to? One was on Commons, the other on WP-ru. — kwami (talk) 03:53, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. The corrections in the description for this map [File:World marriage-equality laws (up to date).svg] did not extend to the descriptions for the map on this page https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA

Also the dark blue color icon, denoting the legal status of same-sex marriage, is not in the description of this map [File:Same-sex marriage in the United States.svg] on this page https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%A8%D0%90 Shinkai20 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

"Spoken around the baltic sea by finnic peoples"

Hi, you said "Finnic peoples" is an ambiguous term. It's as ambiguous as "Finno-Ugric peoples" or "Uralic peoples". If the ambiguity arises from the fact that we don't know if the finnic peoples are in the Baltic area or in the Siberian area, then saying "spoken around the baltic sea by finnic peoples" solves that problem, no? Blomsterhagens (talk) 10:23, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker)@Blomsterhagens: No it most definitely doesn't, since "spoken around the Baltic Sea" implies that Finnic languages have been spoken natively also along the western and southern shores of the Baltic Sea, which isn't true, since such languages have only ever been spoken natively along parts of the eastern side of the Baltic Sea, centered on the Gulf of Finland. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 14:08, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

In which case the wording can be updated to say "...spoken on the northeastern side of the baltic sea by finnic peoples". Blomsterhagens (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, that would work fine. Or we could just remove the word 'around', which I just did -- though the greater precision of your wording may be better. BTW, I rv'd the change from FU to Uralic ppls, as I figured an ethnic article should link to another ethnic article. If we're gonna use the language article, maybe better to alert the reader by saying 'who speak Uralic languages'. — kwami (talk) 18:09, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Syria page

Not a vandal... I just like going to the Syria War page for the map to see how it is going. Took me 5 minutes see where it'd gone.

I now see I can expand it, so I personally am good. But want to help other people be able to see the info, which as far as I'm aware is the best, most updated, map on the internet.

I'm a newb, but hope you and other editors will fix the infobox soon to conform with technical standards so that other people can easily see the info! — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaximumIdeas (talk • contribs) 19:50, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@MaximumIdeas: Yeah, it's a real mess. Not going to be fixed any time soo, I don't think. I just started a vote on how to fix it, if you want to state your pref (on the article's talk page). — kwami (talk) 19:57, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Yeah. Thanks for the poll, just responded there. MaximumIdeas (talk) 20:10, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Uralic peoples

Hi, what about starting a new Uralic peoples page? Even if it's just a disambiguation page at first. The fact that Uralic peoples links to a language page is clearly something that could be fixed. Blomsterhagens (talk) 21:40, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

No, we had consensus to delete that article. There's no coherent subject of "Uralic peoples" apart from the Finno-Ugric peoples, and those are only a valid topic because there are some FU cultural associations, and even then it's usually more Finnic than Finno-Ugric. It's not like the Nenets, Saami and Magyar have a shared ethnic identity. It would be an appropriate article if it discussed the culture etc of the speakers of proto-Uralic (e.g., 'Indo-European peoples' redirects to 'Proto-Indo-Europeans'), but currently there's probably not enough to split off the language-family article. (And it should probably be called s.t. like 'Proto-Uralians'.)

THere used to be a lot of "X peoples" articles, where X was some language family. But ethnographic article should be justifiable as ethnography, which some linguistic cladistic model is not. Most of them were complete garbage, and were magnets for additional garbage, and the few useful bits could be merged into the family article or relevant ethnographic articles where they were less likely to attract crackpots. I mean, we had spurious articles on 'Altaic peoples', 'Nilo-Saharan peoples', 'Papuan peoples', 'Sino-Tibetan peoples', as if they had any objective reality. We made a rare exception for Finno-Ugric peoples, because of those cultural associations, but I wonder if it shouldn't be merged with Finnic peoples. — kwami (talk) 22:01, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Finno-Ugric should def not be merged with Finnic, as they are clearly separate identities and are also handled separately in literature. Comparable to differences between the concepts of Baltic vs Balto-Slavic vs Slavic. "Finnic" is not the same as Finno-Ugric and should not be treated as such. Blomsterhagens (talk) 22:23, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I understand the need of trying to avoid the "X peoples" problem. But still - "Uralic peoples" has enough content in literature to at least justify a disambiguation page. Blomsterhagens (talk) 22:26, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I understand that Finnic and FU are not synonyms. What I was wondering was whether there was enough of a distinction to bother with two articles. Your Balto-Slavic comparison doesn't work because there's no 'Balto-Slavic people' either. As for a dab page, what use would it serve? A rd to the language-family article is sufficient. What other links would there be?

There's enough distinction between finnic and ugric, yes. Especially on an identity level. Also in research literature. Re dab page - I don't know, I thought maybe it could list all the "peoples" who are uralic? Although yes, I get your point - it would create the "X peoples" issue again. Ok, fair. Blomsterhagens (talk) 22:54, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there's a lot of nonsense in the lit by people who reify linguistic theories because they're unwilling or incapable of doing the ethnographic work. That doesn't mean we should follow. There are also a lot of people who use the phrase "Uralic people(s)" as shorthand for "people who speak Uralic languages", but that belongs in the language-family article. If it had its own article, we'd be constantly fighting with people who don't know better than to take the phrase literally, as an ethnic identification. One of the problems with doing that is that when language theories change, it looks as though people's ethnic identities change. There is no "Ugric people", for example, just a linguistic theory that many have now abandoned. Ethnicity doesn't depend on what linguists identify or reject. (E.g., if we discovered that an undocumented purportedly Saami language -- classified as such based on the ethnic identity of its speakers -- was actually Finnic, Germanic or a creole, etc., that wouldn't mean the people were no longer Saami.) — kwami (talk) 22:41, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Baltic Sea Finns

Hi, maybe you can give your opinion on this topic on the talk page. I don't understand the reasoning for discounting a source by the editor. Or why the word itself is an issue. Blomsterhagens (talk) 23:02, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Finnic peoples by the Baltic Sea

Hey,

I know this is not a commonly used term, but what are your thoughts on something like that for the alternative article title for Baltic Finnic peoples? The current title is good enough, but as you also mentioned, and has been mentioned in literature, whenever "Baltic" is included, it tends to be confused with "Baltic peoples". I wonder how to best approach this issue. Or "Finnic peoples of the Baltic Sea", or "Finnic peoples of Northeastern Europe". Thoughts? Blomsterhagens (talk) 15:06, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit: I'm also finding West-Finnic peoples Blomsterhagens (talk) 16:24, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blomsterhagens: Yes, I've seen West Finnic as well, but as I think I mentioned somewhere, they aren't necessarily synonyms. When I saw it, the Mari were identified as a West Finnic people (presumably contrasting with the Permians?).

As for possible confusion, I don't think it's a problem in a dedicated article, unlike a broader-topic book that switches back and forth between multiple peoples. We have hat notes and the lead sentence to take care of that -- hat notes for topics it might be confused with, and the lead sentence to ID exactly what the topic is. The problem with making up new titles is that they may have unforseen connotations. Especially informal phrasing such as this, which will likely be taken literally. If a Mari family moved to Tallinn, they would arguably be 'Finnic people by the Baltic Sea', while the Veps and Karelians aren't really by the sea. I think that might be a greater potential for confusion than 'Baltic Finn(ic)', some variant of which is the usual wording when disambiguation is needed. — kwami (talk) 18:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• See Talk:Baltic Finnic peoples#Baltic Sea Finns. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 18:11, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Lexical similarity

Hi kwami!

The page Lexical similarity – which is heavily Ethnologue-leaning – mentions "a standardized set of wordlists" employed to establish figures of similarity. The wording on the Ethnologue site actually is "a set of standardized wordlists", but what bugs me more: are you aware of any concrete and publicly accessible wordlist which is universally used by the Ethnologue team? I only know a couple of SIL lists for specific regions. Any non-specialist reading the page is left with no idea about what a basic wordlist means (check the wise-cracking comments on the Talk page about the 60%-similarity between German and English). For want of better information, I have added a link to Swadesh list, the mother of all wordlists, but a reference to more concrete material would be ideal. –Austronesier (talk) 13:40, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't. In the case of published findings, they may specify the wordlist, but AFAIK that info is not generally available. Even if a ref is given in the Ethn. language article, there isn't always a corresponding entry in the biblio. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Na na na, na na!

Na na na na na, na na na na na na na. Na na na na? Na, na na na; na na na na-na na na.

Na!

(Wandered over and saw User:Kwamikagami#Proto-human_(language). Love it. Made me think of that one scene from "Being John Malkovich" where Malkovich winds up inside his own head.

Related faves of mine: Deriving Proto-World with tools you probably have at home, and How likely are chance resemblances between languages? Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:04, 25 October 2019 (UTC))

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the links. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

A few utterances in late Proto-Human have been catalogued by Randall Munroe. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 22:40, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

I haven't seen that strip in ages. I love the windmills. — kwami (talk) 22:55, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

RfD

Hi, I've nominated the redirect Yogyakarta Sign Langauge for deletion. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 November 4#Redirects with "langauge". Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 14:16, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

And now one more: Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2019_November_8#East_Central_zone. – Uanfala (talk) 01:17, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Ethnologue

Hi kwami! Have you noticed, looks as if SIL has scrapped the OA language pages from earlier editions from the Ethnologue website. We have thousands of dead links now... –Austronesier (talk) 16:42, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

No, I hadn't noticed. I just tried one (Aja), and it was recorded by Wayback Machine, so maybe we can add an archive link. I would assume that their spiders crawled through all the languages. That was the 18th ed,, don't know if since they went subscription they banned bots. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Google didn't find a single other site with the wording "360,000 in Benin (2006). Population total all countries: 550,000.", apart from one that tries to download a doc. So if SIL just changed the addresses, Google hasn't discovered that yet. But I don't see a link for previous editions any more. — kwami (talk) 23:44, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi kwami, the archives are back, but old links are all redirected to a default page that promotes the archive for pay (try [2]). For the current edition, we can at least partially preview individual pages (e.g. [3]), but they have shifted permanently to a hard paywall. Cool enough, classification pages are unlocked ([4]).

What do you think, should we remove the external links from the older "EthnologueXX" templates? –Austronesier (talk) 09:45, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

M87*

There were a number of discussions about Pōwehi when the name was proposed.[5][6] The general consensus was that we shouldn't include mention of it. I would be interested in hearing your reasons for the change at Talk:Messier 87 but for now I have undone your recent edit. --mikeu ^talk 00:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Sana'a

Hi Kwamikagami, I was wondering if we can just close that discussion about moving Sana’a to Sana'a by simply reverting your move. You didn't start a discussion before the move. I think we need to just move all Sana’a articles that you moved, back to the stable version (Sana'a) and then we can have a proper RM to either Sanaa or Sana’a. Do you think that would be okay?. Thanks.--SharabSalam (talk) 10:48, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

What you want to move back to is incorrect. What we have currently may not be the form we want, but at least it's technically correct. (Well, it's missing the final hamza, but that's almost never written in English, whereas the ayin commonly is.) "Sanaa" would be okay, but I don't know why we'd intentionally make it wrong (Sana'a), unless it's because titles can't handle proper encoding. But if that's the case, then the spelling in the lead wouldn't match the spelling in the title, and given how many people try to blindly repeat the title in the lead, that would cause its own problems. Better IMO to let the move request and title policy come to consensus. — kwami (talk) 11:02, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree... on second thought, I think moving back and forth wouldn't be a solution, it would only make things worse.--SharabSalam (talk) 14:54, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Kwami, this is getting stupid

Your obsession with what is or is not a DP or what is or is not in HE has not been backed up by any citations or reliable secondary sources and is only serving to clutter Wikipedia with confusing contradictions. Build up your source base before using Wikipedia as your platform. Serendi^podous 15:12, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

It would help if you said what you were talking about. But we do have at least one source that Ceres is in HE. AFAIK, we don't have any sources for any other putative DPs, and so Ceres is the only one confirmed. (Though since the IAU has simply declared Pluto to be a DP, I don't know what would happen if it turns out not to be in HE and so not meet their definition. Maybe change the definition? But that's CRYSTAL.) — kwami (talk) 20:28, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Ugric "debate"

Hi kwami, just to give you a picture of the IP who keeps us busy: [7]. Found him (safely use a gender pronoun here ;) in the page history of "Aragonese people". –Austronesier (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Those poor alpha males! Always getting trod on by arrogant beta males. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I have no relation to that IP. Nice try though. It seems like you are both threatened by that user for some reason. 142.127.171.128 (talk) 01:26, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

You both have trouble grasping the well-demonstrated relation between many linguistic groupings and ethnicities, shown time and again with genetic and cultural similarities. The Austronesians all have varying degrees of shared customs, traditions and genetic ancestry, including those in common with the groups in the Urheimat in Taiwan. 142.127.171.128 (talk) 01:33, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

And you seem to have trouble grasping that such ethnographic groups do not follow language very closely. There is no difference culturally, ethnographically or genetically that distinguishes neighboring Austronesians and Papuans, so drawing a clear line between them is misguided, though whether due to ignorance or intellectual laziness I don't know. They are Austronesian-speakers and Papuan-speakers. Sure, there was an Austronesian migration, which is why we have an article on Austronesian peoples, but in many case speakers of AN languages are Papuan by ancestry, due to language shift. The same with many many other peoples around the world. Outsiders may want to simplify a complex situation by pretending that ethnicity follows language (based upon whichever linguistic reconstruction or hypothesis they happen to favor), but that would be news to the people themselves. Often ethnicity and language will be congruent, but often it won't. Reifying language classifications as ethnographic groups, without any actual ethnographic evidence, is simply bullshit, and we won't stand for ignorant people pushing bullshit. Now, if you have evidence that your construction is ethnographically valid, that's another matter. We'd be happy to see good evidence that the Spaniards and Samoyeds are part of a coherent Indo-Uralic ethnic group, while the Basques (no connection to the Spaniards) and Yeniseians (no connection to the Samoyeds) are united within a Dene-Caucasian ethnic group. Maybe Basque mythology is unrelated to Spanish mythology, but has obvious and exclusive parallels with Yeniseian mythology, which is unique in Siberia. Good luck.

And before you criticize me for making a strawman argument, many of our linguistics-as-ethnology articles were just as stupid. — kwami (talk) 03:26, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Your opinion is not backed by studies. Most studies show that genetic clusters and ethnicities correlate with two primary factors: geography (distance, topography or insularity) and linguistic groups (which most often correlate with cultural groupings). There are also even larger amounts of work showing the almost universal observation of cultural relation within linguistic groupings. The relation varies between groups, as you mention with your examples from Melanesia, but that does not not mean there is still not a cultural link or genetic/ancestral link, besides the linguistic, not shared with other groups. There clearly IS a difference between Austronesians and neighbouring non-Austronesian Papuans. Non-Austronesian Papuans have been shown in most cases to have zero Austronesian admixture, while nearly all native Austronesian-speaking groups do have some Austronesian ancestry (only in some parts of coastal Melanesia is this not the case, depending on the study). Austronesians speak an Austronesian language as their native language, while Papuans DO NOT - they speak completely different native languages. Language is a major part of culture, and the largest transmitter of culture. In cultural respects, Austronesians have different traditions than non-Austronesian Papuans, especially inland Papuans. Austronesians have seafaring, tattooing, architecture, pottery, mythology, rituals and beliefs, teeth blackening, etc. that is found to varying degrees in ALL Austronesian groups. Non-Austronesian Papuans DO NOT have many of these practices, even those in closer proximity to Austronesians (or "neighbouring" groups). To say there is no ethnic difference between non-Austronesian Papuans and their Austronesian neighbours is false, and you know it. Austronesian speakers most often have some Austronesian admixture, and have Austronesian language and seafaring technology and culture that non-Austronesian Papuans do not have. Just because SOME (a very few) non-Austronesian Papuan groups have a few of these cultural characteristics or some Austronesian admixture does not mean they are the same as their Austronesian-speaking neighbours, or negate from the fact that Austronesian peoples are a valid grouping shown in EVERY study to have similarities in culture, language and genetic ancestry. Read this major study, and look at specifically FIGURE 2 Discerning the Origins of the Negritos, First Sundaland People: Deep Divergence and Archaic Admixture.

A minor few, transitional groups does not negate the existence or clustering of the wider distinct groupings. If that was not so, we would have no subspecies or distinctions of wolves, foxes or any other animals. There are almost always areas or gradient pockets of transition, with some being more abrupt or rigid than others.

This is the most important thing you have failed to grasp: Your example of neighbouring Austronesian and non-Austronesian Papuans or Melanesians is too simplistic. It is not a universal case. There are many cases where the groups are not adjacent at all, but simply nearby, and the difference is much more ABRUPT or rigid (e.g. the interior Papuans/Melanesians vs the coastal Austronesians of New Britain or the Solomon Islands); meanwhile, there are examples of the cases you mention where the difference is much more (but not completely) gradual or blurred (apart from language), like the Austronesians vs non-Austronesian Melanesians/Papuans in Timor or in Halmahera. Thus, there are cases where the neighbouring groups are not very different, and others where they are. None of this changes the fact that there is a valid cultural, linguistic and genetic ancestry grouping of both Austronesian peoples and Papuan/Melanesian peoples. Most Papuan speakers have no Austronesian admixture and most Austronesians do not have any Papuan admixture -- although most do have other 'Australo-Melanesian' admixture from Philippine Negritos or Malaysian Negritos/Orang Asli; Taiwanese Austronesian, however, do not have any Australo-Melanesian admixture and are purely Austronesian with some having minor Sinitic or Tai admixture. 142.127.171.128 (talk) 14:26, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

And what does any of that have to do with you claiming that certain peoples form an ethnic group based solely on some linguistic hypothesis? When the hypothesis is rejected, do they cease to be cousins? If you can define ethnicity independently of language, and then see how closely it corresponds to language, fine. But if you define ethnicity based on language, and then justify it because the languages are related, then you're engaged in circular reasoning. There's too much of that kind of garbage on WP as it is. — kwami (talk) 22:25, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

File permission problem with File:Thunder Bay CBC sign in Ojibwe.png

Thanks for uploading File:Thunder Bay CBC sign in Ojibwe.png, which you've attributed to CBC. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file has agreed to release it under the given license.

If you are the copyright holder for this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either

• make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
• Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.

If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described in section F11 of the criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Wikiacc (¶) 23:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

On the matter of Slovenia

Greetings! I am writing to you regarding the topic of Slovenia you partook in earlier today.

To be perfectly honest, I was relieved when you appeared in the talk section - I remember you from a couple of years ago when there was some row of similar nature (I fail to recall the specifics, sadly - but you made a stance of sufficient memorability that after all this time, I still remember it).

I have also just published my reply to Jingiby's arbitrary inclusion of inaccurate and fallacious information in pursuit of certain personal agenda that is, at least to me, in contrary to the broadest sense of what Wikipedia is about - sharing knowledge backed by established, neutral and generally attainable sources of no dubious nature and detached from any subjective sentiment.

I have made three attempts to correct his "additions", only for my contributions (for which I provided a reference that was already in place before - the CIA World Factbook) to be reverted, with the reversion being accompanied with his warning of an imminent block or ban (as you can see on my talk page). His talk page is inaccessable to me, furthermore, browsing through his recent history of edits, it becomes apparent he engages in a certain, to use a term of much informality, "moral crusade", disregarding any sort of received criticism. That shows in his unilateral neglect of my referenced points, not discussing their contents (that directly contradict the information he provided) but rather replying with subjective excerpts from obscure sources that do not, as is evident, deal with the topic at hand in any way, even emphasising derogatory sentiments reminiscent of the rhetoric of Milosevic's regime in the 90s (to explain - in the Serbian media, Slovenia was presented as an entity of traitors who wanted to abandon the "Motherland" Serbia, picturing them as a group of people who regarded themselves as "superior" - the stance apparently adopted by D.Norris whom Jingiby cited). Sadko's inclusion in the debate follows the same pattern.

In such situation, I turn to you - I have been a Wikipedia editor before (though a long time ago - so long in fact, I had to make a new account to contribute in this specific matter as I forgot my previous username), but have never experienced anything of that sort. I usually shrug such things off, yet this one is an exception - both because of his obvious political motive determining the nature of his contributions and the effect his inclusion could have (Wikipedia is after all the leading source of reference material on the Internet, with articles of countries being a major factor in the way a certain country is percieved) on the readers of the article. For that reason, I ask - what can be done in order to permanently restore the former state of the page? I am not familiar with reports on vandalism or spamming, neither on contacting the RCP.

I am deeply grateful for your help! --Øksfjord (talk) 19:01, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I know very little about this. For dispute resolution, you'll find it under the 'Community portal' link on the left-hand side of your screen (in my setup, it's just under the 'search' window). You might want to ask for a 3rd-party opinion. But this isn't vandalism or spamming, and if you call it that, you're not likely to be received well. (Two editors, each claiming the other is a 'vandal', tend to annoy people.) I don't know either of you as people, but very often people get into such arguments because they believe what they were taught in school or see on TV. That's not 'vandalism'.

Whether Slovenia wants to distance itself from Yugoslavia, or Serbia wants to categorize it as Balkan, is really irrelevant. If the dispute itself is notable, you can write a section about it. Otherwise, we simply go by best sources. If such sources are inconsistent, then we report the inconsistency. I'm used to seeing Slovenia characterized as a Central European state (it was part of Hapsburg Austria, after all), but there may be very good sources that it's a Balkan state. So be it. I could be that Slovenia was considered Central European before the creation of Yugoslavia, Balkan during the time of Yugoslavia, and started switching back after the breakup. If so, you can write about that. But in ambiguous situations like that, saying it "is" this or "is" that is not very helpful. — kwami (talk) 19:37, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

BTW, if this is a dispute that is likely to recur, it is probably best to have a mediated discussion on the talk page to come to some kind of consensus. Who knows, you and Jingiby might come to respect each other as editors and find you can work together. If you can do that, then in the future if someone tries to change the result, you can revert them and refer to the prior consensus as justification. If the dispute escalates, people are likely to side with you because of that prior consensus, unless the new party wants to re-open the debate and come to a new consensus -- but they'd need to do that on the talk page before changing the article. — kwami (talk) 19:44, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I seem to recall the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has made some statements about this subject. And here, for text: ^_^

This very alibi confronts us with the first of many paradoxes concerning Balkan: its geographic delimitation was never precise. It is as if one can never receive a definitive answer to the question, "Where does it begin?" For Serbs, it begins down there in Kosovo or Bosnia, and they defend the Christian civilization against this Europe's Other. For Croats, it begins with the Orthodox, despotic, Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia defends the values of democratic Western civilization. For Slovenes, it begins with Croatia, and we Slovenes are the last outpost of the peaceful Mitteleuropa. For Italians and Austrians, it begins with Slovenia, where the reign of the Slavic hordes starts. For Germans, Austria itself, on account of its historic connections, is already tainted by the Balkanic corruption and inefficiency. For some arrogant Frenchmen, Germany is associated with the Balkanian Eastern savagery — up to the extreme case of some conservative anti-European-Union Englishmen for whom, in an implicit way, it is ultimately the whole of continental Europe itself that functions as a kind of Balkan Turkish global empire with Brussels as the new Constantinople, the capricious despotic center threatening English freedom and sovereignty. So Balkan is always the Other: it lies somewhere else, always a little bit more to the southeast, with the paradox that, when we reach the very bottom of the Balkan peninsula, we again magically escape Balkan. Greece is no longer Balkan proper, but the cradle of our Western civilization.

Double sharp (talk) 21:56, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I wonder if it would be acceptable in the article. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Žižek's characterization hits the nail on the head: "Balkan" has always been a term of exclusion. RS, NPOV: the perfect quote! –Austronesier (talk) 22:37, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I love it. I added it to Balkans, but it's probably a bit long for some people. I can't see any good way to trim it, though. — kwami (talk) 22:40, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks all of you! Really appreciate the help.

I did assume the situation would fall under neither vandalism nor spamming, but couldn't be sure as I do not know the exact range of the definitions (never got myself entangled in such a situation before). It does seem that someone has already called upon a 3rd party in the dispute, so we'll just have to wait and see.

The above statement of Zizek is fantastic and does indeed capture the spirit of the definition of the Balkans - in my opinion, that fluidity itself is the reason why the terms "Balkans" and SE Europe" should be avoided in the first place (to use an argument a simili ad simile with the criminal law - if there is a reasonable doubt about the veracity of a certain point of view, it cannot be considered the truth). I know this is impossible, but should nonetheless be kept in mind when ascribing those two terms to countries that are usually categorised as entities in other regions (the way Slovenia is, for that matter - in every language I checked on this site, Slovenia is considered exclusively a part of Central Europe). --Øksfjord (talk) 23:12, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, this kind of long remark has been removed before. I like Žižek's one better than Glenner's previous one, though; it makes its point very clear through copious (and funny) examples. Double sharp (talk) 23:22, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi everybody! This is the last update of the article Balkans on Encyclopedia Britannica online, from the last week: Nov 19, 2019. Its authors are Loring Danforth, Richard J. Crampton and John Allcock (former head, research unit in South East European studies, University of Bradford, England). In the article they have stated that increasingly in the early 21st century, another pair of definitional terms has gained currency among them Southeastern Europe.

Balkans, also called Balkan Peninsula, easternmost of Europe’s three great southern peninsulas. There is not universal agreement on the region’s components. The Balkans are usually characterized as comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia— with all or part of each of those countries located within the peninsula. Portions of Greece and Turkey are also located within the geographic region generally defined as the Balkan Peninsula, and many descriptions of the Balkans include those countries too... More often than not, Slovenia is included as a member of the Balkans because of its long historical ties with its neighbors to the southeast and because of its former incorporation in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and federal Yugoslavia, etc. Check here, please. Jingiby (talk) 15:45, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you provided that source before and we provided our own opinion on why it cannot be considered definitive enough. Let's wait for TU-nor to provide his opinion on the matter instead as he has been called in as the 3rd party. Øksfjord (talk)

You are wrong. Jingiby (talk) 19:00, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Penutian languages

Hi kwami! It's quite a while, but can you remember the source for this edit? I can't find anything about it in DeLancey's publications, and there's a cn-tag from 2007. Was it a Linguist List post, or maybe p.c.? I want to add some info about a 2018 paper that DeLancey has published in AA about Inland Penutian, where he restricts it to Yok-Utian and Plateau, so I'm not quite sure whether I should leave the old stuff in the subsection "Recent hypotheses" or just scrap it. –Austronesier (talk) 15:42, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

No, it was a publication, I think. I'll see if I can find it.

So, what are the changes? He has Maiduan "probably" in Plateau, where I left it out. More importantly, he has Cayuse instead of Molala in Plateau, and those langs are probably not closely related. Given the intro para and his comment just before Table 7, I suspect he might have left Molala out of the abstract by mistake, since it's Cayuse that is too poorly attested to classify.

Hm, I don't know where that date came from. Maybe republished later? If it were a draft, the only thing that would make sense would be 2007 "The semantic structure of Klamath bipartite stems", but I don't see anything in there. Unless it was never published? But we're left with justifying his view that Kalapuya, Takelma and Wintuan do not belong, or at least not in the traditional subgrouping. (Maybe that only means Wintuan is dubious as Plateau, and Kalapuya-Takelman dubious as a single unit?)

here is his 1996 "Penutian in the bipartite stem belt: Disentangling areal and genetic correspondences", which should give some clues as to his position a decade before I made that edit. — kwami (talk) 17:26, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Mithun 1999 selected Delancey & Golla 1997 (The Penutian Hypothesis, retrospect and prospects. IJAL 63, 171-202) as the primary source at the time.

Golla 2011 (The California Indian Languages) gives the following 'provisional' subgrouping -

• Tsimshianic
• Chinookan
• Coastal Oregon (Alsea, Siuslaw, Coosan)
• Kalapuya-Takelman
• Plateau (Sahaptin, Molala, Klamath)
• Maiduan
• Wintuan
• Yok-Utian

---

I could ask DeLancey about the unpublished paper (I've just noticed he an I have a mutual friend on FB lol), but I think we should just build on the published material.

The main difference is the inclusion of Maiduan in Inland Penutian, and "Maritime Penutian" which I cannot find anywhere else. In DeLancey (1996) and his joint paper with Golla (1997), he writes that Maiduan shows a close affinity to Plateau, but remains uncommited whether this is the result of contact or genetic unity. "Inland Penutian" was not coined yet then, and D&G have an areal "Cismontane" grouping that correspond to "Maritime Penutian" in our article. The 2018 article is agnostic with regards to the Maiduan question (the omision of Molala is clearly by mistake). From all I have read, DeLancey is still convinced that if Penutian is valid, Wintuan, Kalapuyan and Takelma will be part of it. He just hesitant to put Wintuan in a close grouping with any other Penutian branch (D&G 1997, p.182), and agrees with Tarpent & Kendall ("1998", actually unpublished) that Kalapuyan and Takelma do not link up closely.

Golla's subgrouping (2011) should be included in the article as the current view of Penutian "subgrouping" (for believers), or a list of accepted primary families (for critis); but then Coast Oregon and Yok-Utian are still controversial, and Takelma-Kalapuyan all the more. In any case, it is a very good starting point for a revamp of the article. Btw, Golla is very benevolent, look at the way deals with the outlandish "Cal-Ugrian theory" in the same volume.

Takelma-Kalapuyan should not be totally written off though, in spite of T&K 1998 and Mithun 1999. Anthony Grant (2002) still leaves the question open [8], and I personally agree with Grant, based on my own work on C. Kalapuyan (not yet published in a RS). Tarpent shared with me her draft of their presentation, and I find their arguments not convincing: they mainly show that Takelma and Kalapuyan are typologically rather distant, but they do not systematically deconstruct the lexical evidence. I will add a section "Takelma-Kalapuyan" in the Penutian article, to keep the material in one place (I have added some stuff in Kalapuyan languages a while ago). –Austronesier (talk) 10:43, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good. I don't know the paper is unpublished, however. It might be that he was cited by someone else, and if he still agrees with it, it might be worth keeping. — kwami (talk) 19:07, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Bahá’í literature ()

I don't understand why you moved Bahá’í literature → Bahá’í literature (). "not punctuation"?? Please explain, thanks. wbm1058 (talk) 22:08, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Also see List of writings of Baháʼu'lláh () Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 22:13, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, both of those got messed up. Replied on Wbm's talk page. — kwami (talk) 22:16, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Kwami, can't you just request the moves at WP:RMT, or ask someone else to do them, as we talked earlier? – Uanfala (talk) 22:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I see that he did put in technical requests, though not by using {{db-move}}, at Baháʼí literature and List of writings of Baháʼu'lláh. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:06, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I should do them as Uafala asks. I forget sometimes when I'm rushed. — kwami (talk) 23:09, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, I've moved them back, to where I see they were before. @Francis Schonken: It seems you and Kwamikagami have differing interpretations of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Bahá’í spelling. Please consider these moves to be controversial, and submit a requested move, if you are not satisfied with the status quo. Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 23:26, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: re. "Please consider these moves to be controversial, and submit a requested move": indeed, I've consistently said this should be done by WP:RM, not by a single person declaring consensus where there is none apparent. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've tagged both spurious pages for deletion, as they have no incoming links. — kwami (talk) 23:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

AWB and order of article elements

Hi, your AWB edits appear to be consistently moving short descriptions down in the article, placing them after hatnotes and protection templates (like here). But they're meant to be at the very top, before anything else: MOS:ORDER. I really hope that's not a bug in AWB. – Uanfala (talk) 21:18, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a bug in AWB. I have it set for 'apply general fixes'. — kwami (talk) 21:20, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Wow

haven't seen you in a while. ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 23:59, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Lingnut! Yeah, been a while. Didn't recognize your new name. — kwami (talk) 08:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Merry Merry!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2020!

Hello Kwamikagami, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020. Happy editing, ★Trekker (talk) 16:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

IPA-x templates

Hey Kwamikagami, I was looking at contributors to the family of IPA-x templates, such as Template:IPA-ja and your name appeared a lot, which is why I'm here. There was a recent discussion about a different group of language templates (xx-icon) that had the same design approach as these - a template for each language. That discussion resulted in changing the design to one template that accepts as a parameter the language - so in this example, instead of {{IPA-ja}} it would be {{IPA|ja}}. For editors, the change is very minimal as instead of a hyphen they use a vertical bar, but the behind the scenes can now be maintained much more reasonably. Now if you want to apply a change to all templates, you need to update each individual template, once consolidated, there is need for only one edit. As you seem to be one of the maintainers of these templates, would you know where the correct place would be to discuss such a change before TfD? --Gonnym (talk) 14:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Gonnym. I don't do much maintenance any more. I would notify Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics and some of the main IPA templates, like maybe Template talk:IPA, Template talk:IPA-all and Template talk:IPAc-en. — kwami (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Query re wekiweki

Re this name shift, there is no contemporary 'community' I know of self-identifying as wekiweki, which is just one of several spellings. Could you elucidate? Thanks in anticipation.Nishidani (talk) 12:22, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani. I was following AIATSIS. Under their comments for [S21] Warga Warga, they say,

Warga Warga and Weki Weki refer to the same language (Clark 1996, 2005). Previously there was a Thesaurus heading for Warga Warga but not Weki Weki. As the two are now treated as the same language and Weki Weki is the community-preferred name, they have been merged under the Weki Weki S33 heading.

They say the same thing under S33. (Weki Weki and Warga Warga refer to the same language (Clark 1996, 2005), of which the community-preferred name is Weki Weki.) That's all I was going on. — kwami (talk) 23:24, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

There is no evidence of what is meant by a 'community-preferred name', obviously because there is great confusion over the names, which are used to indicate very distinct geohistorical peoples, whose descendants' communities are not visible on the web in these terms. AIATSIS may have good grounds for this assertion, but I cannot verify it anywhere.

Weki Weki is Tindale’s Watiwati (AIATSIS S33.

Variant names are Wathiwathi (wati = no), Watthiwatthi, Wattewatte, Watty-watty, Wotti-wotti, Withaija, Wohdi Wohdi, Woani (means 'man'), Woonyi, Dacournditch (horde between Tyntynder and Swan Hill), Biangil (place name Piangil).

Their location was given as

Murray River between a point 15 miles (24 km.)above Murrumbidgee Junction and Swan Hill; at Piangil;extending northward to about Moolpa, N.S.W. According to Cameron, the name Narinari is also applied to this tribe but there is some evidence to show they are separate peoples.According to Stone, the Wembawemba called the dialect of the Watiwati tribe Burrea.

Around Piangil, in short.

(b)Warka Warka Warga Warga S21.

Variant names are Werkawerka, Waikywaiky (['warki] = ['warka] = no), Weki-weki, Wengenmarongeitch, Mirdiragoort, Boo-roung, Boorong, Wirtu (means 'man'), Wirtoo

Their location was given as

Tyrrell Creek and Lake Tyrrell south to Warracknabeal and Birchip; west to Hopetoun; on Morton Plains.p.208

Around Warracknabeal in short

As you can see, there is no overlap geographically.

Thirdly, the scholarship identifies (see my edit to Weki Weki) Warka Warka as probably not an autonomous community, but a subgroup of the Wergaia.

I don’t often use AIATSIS because it is a highly abstract synthesis that perplexes me compared to the actual secondary ethnographic sources I draw on, all of which try to iron out distinctions that the list format of AIATSIS blurs and where confusion reigns.

Wouldn't it be safer to just revert the name back. I can't find any documentation whatsoever, unlike with the Warkawarka, about a Weki Weki people, and people would probably search for the former.Nishidani (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Sure. Go ahead and move it back (or I will). I don't know the lit, so you decide what's best. — kwami (talk) 22:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, pal. I dunno how to make name shifts. I dunno much about anything technical, so, give it a few days, and if anyone else watching those pages (there are a few) can't get round to it, I'd appreciate you fixing it. Thanks for all the great work, not only on those Aussie articles. Best Nishidani (talk) 10:04, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Ooops. I see you've already done it. Thanks

Voiced retroflex implosive

Hi kwami, we have talked about it before, but maybe you want to mention the case of Muna as an attested occurrence:[9], p. 19.

There is further a fresh MA thesis about the Central Flores languages (yup, I've already created an article from it and other sources): [10]. Unfortunately, Elias only goes into detail for Lio, where he describes the implosive as apico-alveolar (p. 31). There is also a sketch for Ngadha, but here he lumps all apical and laminal consonants as "coronals" (p. 82). So it's neither a confirmation nor a contradiction for the old claim that Ngadha has a retroflex implosive. –Austronesier (talk) 15:40, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Spelling of "Baháʼí"

Hi Kwamikagami, I recently finished an article for Santiago Baháʼí Temple, which has (after some difficulty) been moved to the mainspace. Now I am hoping to add a bunch of redirects because of the wide range of names used to identify the building, but I can't seem to understand the orthography conventions. I saw you corrected the Baháʼí orthography for several articles so I wanted to ask you: how do you tell the three versions of the accents apart in order to 1) use the correct one, and 2) add separate redirects for all of them? It would be great if you could briefly clarify this for me (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Bahá'í spelling does not seem to help). Thanks very much. Gazelle55 (talk) 21:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Gazelle55: The problem you're having is that that page is not part of the MOS, but a personal essay by a user who objected to the spelling conventions. I've moved it to User:Francis Schonken/Bahá'í spelling where, per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, an essay belongs. The MOS pages now rd to Baháʼí orthography. There there are footnotes under the table that describe how you can input the hamza and ayin. The easiest way is probably with {{hamza}} and {{okina}} [rather than with {{ayin}}, which is a different ayin transcription, one that's used for Arabic but isn't used by the Bahai community.] However, per the MOS, any simple apostrophe is to be rendered with an ASCII <'>. That is, if it's a letter in Persian, and thus pronounced in Persian, then transcribe it as a hamza or ayin/okina, but if it's a contraction, and thus not a letter and not pronounced, then use the usual apostrophe punctuation mark. With smart-quote typesetting, the apostrophe and hamza will look the same, but we don't use smart quotes on WP. — kwami (talk) 22:55, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Here's how you can test if the hamza/ayin letters are correct. Clip the word and paste in the search box. I just tried that with the <ʼ> in the <Baháʼí> in your article title, and it took me to modifier letter apostrophe. Note that's a Unicode letter, and so correct for transcribing a letter. If your search had instead taken you to quotation mark, then it would've been the wrong code point (a punctuation mark rather than a letter -- this can make a difference in computer files even if they look the same).

Similarly, if you search for the <ʻ> in <ʻAlí>, it will take you to ʻokina, which is an alphabetic letter an therefor correct. Again, if it had taken you to 'quotation mark', it would've been wrong. BTW, in the 'okina article they show how 'okina and the quote mark look a little different in a good font. I believe that Hawaiians chose the six-shape for 'okina rather than the nine-shape so that it would be easily distinguished from a curly apostrophe. — kwami (talk) 23:05, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

If you search the page for ASCII <'>, you'll find all instances of curly quotes as well. I just did that in your article, and it looks like there's just one curly quote in the text, a bunch in the refs, and one in the external links. The only straight ASCII apostrophe in another word/name is in Mashriqu'l-Adhkár, but that actually is an apostrophe (a contraction of the article "al") and so correct. — kwami (talk) 23:16, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:, thanks for the very detailed explanation, I believe that clears everything up. Gazelle55 (talk) 18:53, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

FAR notifications template

Featured article review Talk notices given
Diocletianic Persecution 2020-05-03 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 2020-05-22 Underwater diving 2020-09-15 Józef Piłsudski 2020-09-25, 2021-08-07 Supernatural (season 1) 2020-11-02 Supernatural (season 2) 2020-11-02 Kahaani 2020-11-18 2023-02-25 Major depressive disorder 2020-11-20 2022-08-18 2024-11-19 India 2020-11-29 and 2023-11-28 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash 2020-11-30 Tumbler Ridge 2020-12-26 2024-11-19 Glacier National Park (U.S.) 2020-12-30 Ivan Bagramyan 2021-02-21 Bird 2021-02-21 Hamilton, Ontario 2021-02-22 Comet Hyakutake 2021-02-22 Mary Wollstonecraft 2021-03-03 Postage stamps of Ireland 2021-03-11, 2023-03-25 The Joy of Sect 2021-04-08 The World Ends with You 2021-04-23 Defense of the Ancients 2021-06-10 Dwarf planet 2021-08-14 Robert Garran 2021-10-09 Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia 2021-11-27 Hurricane Edith (1971) 2021-12-04 Meteorological history of Hurricane Jeanne 2021-12-05 Meteorological history of Hurricane Gordon 2021-12-05 Hurricane Dean 2021-12-05 Meteorological history of Hurricane Wilma 2021-12-05 Meteorological history of Hurricane Ivan 2021-12-05 Effects of Hurricane Ivan in the Lesser Antilles and South America 2021-12-05 Tropical Storm Bonnie (2004) 2021-12-05 Tropical Storm Henri (2003) 2021-12-05 Tropical Storm Edouard (2002) 2021-12-05 Hurricane Fabian 2021-12-05 Effects of Hurricane Isabel in Maryland and Washington, D.C. 2021-12-06 Hurricane Erika (1997) 2021-12-06 Hurricane Isabel 2021-12-06 Hurricane Kenna 2021-12-06 Typhoon Pongsona 2021-12-07 Hubble Space Telescope 2022-01-08 Dürer's Rhinoceros 2022-02-04 Io (moon) 2022-02-13 Solar eclipse 2022-04-30 Manchester 2022-05-12 Transformers (film) 2022-06-05 Slate industry in Wales 2022-07-05 Working [11] Schizophrenia 2022-08-18 Amanita muscaria 2022-08-26 Battle of Corydon 2022-10-10 White Deer Hole Creek 2022-10-22 Work ongoing December 2022 Mayan languages 2022-11-19 Sentence spacing 2022-11-19 Indigenous people of the Everglades region 2022-11-21 First-move advantage in chess 2022-11-21 King Arthur 2022-11-22 Stephen Crane 2022-11-22 Mark Kerry 2022-12-01 California Gold Rush 2022-12-02 Harry McNish Noticed 2022-12-03 History of Lithuania (1219–1295) 2022-12-03 Władysław II Jagiełło 2022-12-03 David I of Scotland 2022-12-03 Coeliac disease 2022-12-03 Metabolism 2022-12-03 Northern bald ibis 2022-12-09 Hippocampus 2022-12-09 Cane toad 2022-12-09 Boeing 777 2022-12-09 Second Crusade 2022-12-09 Delichon 2022-12-10 Rock martin 2022-12-10 Lion 2022-12-10 Victoria Cross for New Zealand 2023-01-01 Work ongoing January 2023 Bengali language movement 2023-01-15 USS New Jersey (BB-62) 2023-01-23 West Wycombe Park 2023-01-25 Holkham Hall 2023-01-25 Redshift 2023-01-26 Angkor Wat 2023-01-28 Jack Sheppard 2023-02-02 Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia 2023-02-12 Guy Fawkes Night 2023-02-14 Marcus Trescothick 2023-02-22 Moe Berg 2023-03-10 Falaise Pocket 2023-03-29 James Nesbitt 2023-03-29 Johnstown Inclined Plane 2023-04-23 Dengue fever 2023-04-30 Wood Badge 2023-05-15 Hurricane Claudette (2003) 2023-05-16 Cleveland 2023-05-16 Buildings and architecture of Bristol 2023-05-20 Oregon State Capitol 2023-06-02 Surrender of Japan 2023-06-30 Felice Beato 2023-08-04 Augustus 2023-08-08 Caspar David Friedrich 2023-08-13 Jocelin of Glasgow 2023-11-01 Hydrogen 2023-11-01 Ancient Egypt 2023-11-18 Acetic acid 2023-12-8 Eric Brewer (ice hockey) 2024-01-02 White dwarf 2024-01-26 Adelaide Anne Procter 2024-01-30 Boston 2024-04-15 Borscht 2024-06-15 Khan Noonien Singh 2024-07-03 Taylor Swift 2024-08-02 Nahuatl 2024-08-04 Carnivàle 2024-08-09 Your Power 2024-08-16 Washington, D.C. 2024-08-27 George Washington (inventor) 2024-08-30 Tasha Yar 2024-10-20 Alien vs. Predator (film) 2024-10-26 Mom and Dad (1945 film) 2024-10-26 A Cure for Pokeritis 2024-10-26 Zombie Nightmare 2024-10-26 Gertie the Dinosaur 2024-11-1 Characters of God of War 2024-11-3
Find more: Unreviewed featured articles

I see you have submitted articles to Featured article review in the past six months. Here is a template listing FAs (and dates) with talk page notifications that a Featured article review is needed. According to the FAR instructions, after waiting five to seven days to see if anyone engages to address the issues, anyone can bring an article to FAR, subject to a) no more than one nomination every two weeks; and b) no more than four nominations on the page at one time, unless permission for more is given by a FAR coordinator. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:29, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Papuan languages

In the future, please discuss changes on talk pages before doing major reorganizing of articles on Papuan language families.

What is your rationale for following Usher's classifications? Those are not mainstream classifications. There is way too much lumping that confuses areal influences with genetic inheritance. Foley, Hammarstrom, Pawley, and other Papuanists show strong evidence that Papuan families need to be split, not lumped. As you may already know, Usher operates on the fringes of Papuan linguistics, and his classifications are not universally accepted. For example, Taiap is certainly not Torricelli, but Usher claims it is.

Foja Range languages and South Pauwasi languages are not in Glottolog, Ethnologue, or any other major publication, and I suggest we wait until these proposed families can be better demonstrated. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 04:55, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Ethnologue is not a RS for classification. Hammarstrom adopts large chunks of Usher's classification, while Pawley and Ross are on the NGW board of advisors, and Usher is on the editorial board of Language and Linguistics in Melanesia (along with Pawley, Lynch, Hammarstrom, Ross, Evans and Foley), so he's hardly 'fringe'. He also splits families where others lump, like Sepik and TNG. What's your evidence that Usher confuses areal influence with genetic inheritance? — kwami (talk) 05:05, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Like Amerindian languages, Papuan languages are incredibly diverse, both structurally and lexically, unlike the languages of Eurasia. Any significant amount of lumping in these parts of the world will have to conflate a lot of areal influence with genetic inheritance. I would suggest at least putting question marks on some of the nodes in the infobox classifications, because Usher's macro-groupings are very reminiscent of likely invalid macro-groupings such as Hokan and Penutian. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 07:53, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

The languages of Eurasia are also incredibly diverse both structurally and lexically. Though, actually, Papuan languages aren't all that diverse structurally. But the same criticism could be leveled at the classifications of Foley, Ross, Pawley, etc. How do we determine which nodes require question marks? I assume TNG would have to have a question mark wherever it appears. Not even Usher accepts much of that macro-grouping.

"Any significant amount of lumping" ... what is a "significant" amount of lumping? "Lumping" generally means classifying languages together without doing the proper comparative work. AFAICT, Usher does do the comparative work, at least to the satisfaction of peer-review when he publishes. It is very likely that much of his classification will prove to be wrong, just as much of Ross was wrong before him, and Foley before him, and Wurm before him. As further work is done, we will refine our coverage to reflect it, but meanwhile we do the best we can. — kwami (talk) 08:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

That is why South Pauwasi languages needs to be presented as an alternative hypothesis rather than a definitive grouping. I also noticed that the original content about Lepki-Murkim languages was removed. We need two separate articles for these two groupings. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 09:38, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I have no problem with splitting the article, but you're misusing the word 'hypothesis'. And 'alternative' to which classification, since these languages are otherwise unclassified? (Hammerstrom misuses the term 'isolate' to mean 'unclassified'.) As for definitive groupings, there are none in New Guinea, not even Austronesian, whose limits there are unclear in many places and will require the other families to be worked out. Wurm is obsolete. Ross is based almost entirely on 1sg and 2sg PNs, which are insufficient (and the remainder is typology, which is not reliable). Wichmann is an automated comparison, which is unreliable. Pawley is far more lumpist than Usher. — kwami (talk) 20:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Hammarstrom and Foley split the northern New Guinea languages as isolates. Pawley is only a lumper when it comes to Trans-New Guinea. We will keep both Usher and Pawley & Hammarstrom, but it's not a good idea to use Usher as a definitive source as you appear to have been doing. This is why South Pauwasi languages should be a likely small family. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 03:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

My problem wasn't with the word 'likely', but that you had misattributed the sources.

Usher does not claim NWNG is demonstrated. It is a tentative proposal, with the similarities perhaps being due to loans rather than inheritance -- thus the label 'proposed' in the info box. Papuan Gulf and NENG are also still tentative.

BTW, it appears that Foley also misuses the term 'isolate'. An isolate is an established language family, not a language that is so poorly attested that we can't be sure of its relations. E.g., in his subchapter on "The isolate Elseng", Foley says it is "very poorly documented" and that proposed classifications are not warranted by available evidence or are not established. Such languages are more properly called 'unclassified'. There are only a few established isolates in New Guinea, as it takes much more complete data to show that a language isn't related to all potential relatives than it is to show that it is related to just one of them. — kwami (talk) 03:03, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Mailu–Yereban languages or Mailu–Yareban languages

Hello, Which is correct ? Thanks. (Jkrn111 (talk) 00:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)).

Sorry, typo -- I've got the marry–merry merger, sounds the same to me. — kwami (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Khariboli

Hello. Please can you help out with fixing links to dab Khariboli, especially those from templates? It's not obvious to the layman which meaning is intended. Thanks, Certes (talk) 22:53, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I fixed most of them. But for many I have no idea which it is. — kwami (talk) 08:31, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Madang-Upper Yuat or Madang-Arafundi-Piawi ?

Hello Kwami. (Jkrn111 (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)).

Hi. I just went back to Foley, and realized that he used "Upper Yuat" as well, so I'll move the article. I've been avoiding Usher's names when they differ from the rest of the lit, and missed that this wasn't his invention. — kwami (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I put in a tech move request. — kwami (talk) 23:30, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies

Please take a look at the talk page for List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies You've been making quite a few edits to that page recently. The recent comments on the talk page are from editors who don't even think the article should exist, or at least should be drastically modified (with much of the content removed.) Fcrary (talk) 22:40, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

And I am indeed removing much of the content, and sourcing what remains. — kwami (talk) 22:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Satellite provisional designations in infoboxes

I know you are currently busy adding content to infoboxes for natural satellite pages, but I would like to let you know that the last numbers of the satellite designation should be preceded by a space, like S/2010 J 1. Nrco0e (talk · contribs) 05:35, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I've seen a lot of sources that don't space them, like Sheppard's, so I've been copying that. — kwami (talk) 07:59, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Imitation?

Hi, Why do you think this is an imitation? The description from the author doesn't seem to accredit your assumption. -- Basile Morin (talk) 08:53, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Beside it looking like a tourist piece, there are only a small number of known rongorongo tablets, this isn't one of them, and no new ones have surfaced in at least a century. If a new one had been discovered, especially in such pristine condition, it would be international news. — kwami (talk) 22:09, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the explanation -- Basile Morin (talk) 23:01, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

NG geo stubs

FYI, links to Lsjbot articles for NG geo features are at User:Sagotreespirit/New Guinea geography. Hoping to get started when I have some time. Many of the Cebuano articles cite only Geonames, so we'll need to dig up some more RS. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 01:11, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sagotreespirit: ah, that is my list. Thanks for picking up on them. I obviously haven't gotten much done. — kwami (talk) 01:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: About 40 stubs started. We've got more blue links now. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 02:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I was dreading creating PNG maps for all of them, and just gave up. The dot on a generic map is enough to start, and if some of them become more important, maybe someone will create more detailed maps. At least we have stubs to link to now. — kwami (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Some more rivers from Cebuano Wikipedia that are relevant to Papuan language articles: Boiken, Left May, Wogamush, Aitape, Pual. Check especially the East Sepik, West Sepik, Madang, Morobe, and Western Province categories. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 19:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Sagotreespirit/New Guinea geography was just copied to Wikipedia:WikiProject Papua New Guinea/Geography stubs. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 19:18, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Papuan villages

The lists here should also be pretty useful. Many district and village names correspond to language and dialect names.

• List of districts of Papua
• List of districts of West Papua
• List of districts of Maluku
• List of districts of North Maluku
• List of districts of East Nusa Tenggara

— Sagotreespirit (^talk) 22:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for all that work! — kwami (talk) 03:52, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Infobox ethnic group

Template:Infobox ethnic group has been nominated for merging with Template:Infobox ethnonym. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. PPEMES (talk) 14:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Pronunciations and adjectival forms of astronomical names

I am in awe of your work. Kudos. Double sharp (talk) 12:00, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Just got a tract by the "Society for Pure English" on the formation of adjectives from proper (esp. Classical) names. Amusingly, the first tract in the bound volume is "Persian Words in English". Amusing, because even the "Society for Pure English" concedes that English is about as pure as a dockside whore. Still, even whores have rules. — kwami (talk) 23:40, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I just commented (and so did another editor) at la:Disputatio Usoris:Andrew Dalby#derivatives of feminine -ō/-ūs nouns. Sorry it's so late, but indeed, as you'll see, I didn't know how to reply! Andrew Dalby 13:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Creating categories with the same name as main articles

Hello, Kwami, Could You please help if possible ? Please Look at my talk page, the last discussion. I am confused, You never had problem with my way of categorization. We worked together. Am I still allowed to continue editing the way you know well? I created many categories (maybe more than one hundred) and it was ok for admins. Please let me know. Thank You Very Much. Jan (Jkrn111 (talk) 12:13, 31 March 2020 (UTC)).

Primary family Kaki Ae–Eleman or Kaki Ae–Kerema Bay

Hello Kwami, ? btw, thank you for your help. Jan K., Prague (Jkrn111 (talk) 13:02, 1 April 2020 (UTC)).

AFAICT, the family is most commonly just called "Eleman", even when acknowledging that Kaki Ae is diverget. — kwami (talk) 13:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Should I delete the category Kaki Ae–Eleman then ? (Jkrn111 (talk) 13:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)).

If it's already there, you might as well leave it. It's more precise -- some don't accept the connection between Kaki Ae and Eleman proper, and for them 'Eleman' means only the latter. The name 'Kerema Bay' AFAICT is specific to Usher. — kwami (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

--— kwami (talk) 12:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

"Dialect" in infobox for proto-languages

Hi kwami, wouldn't adding |descendant= to the template "Infobox language" be a good idea here? "Dialect" looks more than odd... We could also use it for attested languages like Kawi or Middle English. –Austronesier (talk) 11:50, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that param. Won't work if there's more than one, but better when listing the entire family together. — kwami (talk) 11:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Or "child1" to "childN" as in the template "Infobox language family". These para's don't exist yet, and I'm a total dummy at template editing. –Austronesier (talk) 11:57, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Those aren't available yet. Probably easier just to create a new info box, with ancestors and descendents. — kwami (talk) 12:11, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

If the articles become developed enough, we might want a proto-lang info box. As of now few of them have are, though -- even Uralic and Afrasiatic only have two branch articles apiece. — kwami (talk) 12:00, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

It may be justifiable to use diaN for proto-languages of daughter groups, but your use of famN and diaN at Proto-Tai seems wrong. Surely that should be |fam1=Kra–Dai and |fam2=Tai. Kanguole 12:05, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Surely not. By definition, Proto-Tai is not a member of the Tai language family. But these probably need a dedicated info box that's worded more appropriately, rather than trying to force them in where they don't fit. — kwami (talk) 12:11, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Also, there's a philosophical issue as to whether proto-Tai is a Kradai language -- you could argue it's not a language at all, but a theoretical reconstruction. — kwami (talk) 12:29, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

There were two parts:

1. |fam1=Proto-Kra–Dai is clearly wrong, because that is not "the broadest possible widely accepted language family of which the language is a part". That is Kra–Dai.
2. |dia1=Tai languages is wrong, because Tai is not a "primary dialect" of Proto-Tai. Replacing it is a more difficult issue. Kanguole 12:30, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

What about this[12]? –Austronesier (talk) 12:15, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that proto-AN is not an early form of proto-Philippine. Really, it would be easier just to create a new info box. It wouldn't need to be as complex as the family or language boxes, but could inherit subtemplates like the family colors from them. For now, I think all we'd need is ancestor(s), descendant(s) [whether those are also proto-languages, or the attested members of the family], alt name, era and region. And maybe acceptance/status (e.g. for proto-Altaic, whether p-TB = p-ST, etc.). Can you think of anything else? A lot of the boxes currently have IPA warnings, but the articles don't actually use the IPA. — kwami (talk) 12:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I can try creating a box tomorrow, if neither of you wants to, and we can see how it works. Also, I don't see any need to append 'language' to the article titles, do you? — kwami (talk) 12:41, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure go ahead. And yes, for all cases I can think of, the proto-language is the primary or even the only topic, so "language" is indeed better dropped per WP:COMMONNAME. –Austronesier (talk) 12:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Such an infobox should have fields for the language (sub)family for which this is the proto-language, and for ancestor and child proto-languages. There is no need to include ancestor and child families, which can be obtained from the family link and would be confusing to mix with proto-languages. Kanguole 13:14, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I've had a first stab at {{infobox proto-language}}. Kanguole 15:12, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Kanguole, that helps a lot. But re. the 'family' fields, the entire point is the ancestor and child proto-languages. A list of families is irrelevant, as they aren't actually ancestral. — kwami (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I've added the new {{infobox proto-language}} to Proto-Indo-European and some of its children. Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-Iranian illustrate cases with both ancestors and children. Kanguole added a 'family' field that duplicates the 'children' field,, we should probably discuss where we want the fields relative to each other and how we want them worded. Maybe we could call that field 'members' or something. — kwami (talk) 22:28, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I restored |family=, which you had deleted. In {{infobox language family}}, |children= is an alternative to |child1= ... |childN=, and it would be less confusing to have the same correspondence here.

A proto-language is associated with a language family, not a mere collection of languages. It is the reconstruction of proto-X that establishes the validity of a clade X. It is an accident of natural disambiguation that our language family articles end in "languages", but they are about language families, not mere groups of languages. Kanguole 22:39, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

That is true. But the 'family' parameters do something different in our family and language info boxes -- they create a tree, which would be inappropriate here -- so calling it 'family' may also be confusing. 'Members' might be better as an abbreviation for 'family members'. If 'family', 'children' and 'members' are all inappropriate or inaccurate to varying degrees, which is the least confusing? Or would some other term work? — kwami (talk) 22:42, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I take the point about 'family' being inconsistent with the other infoboxes, but this field is for a language family, not a mere collection of languages. |protolanguage_of=? |reconstructed_family=? Kanguole 22:53, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

That would be accurate, of course. But since the reader won't see it, I think convenience should be a consideration. It wouldn't matter if you copy and paste the template, but for the languages and families, I type them up from scratch. Having short param names like 'fam1', 'dia1', 'iso3' etc. is convenient. It would be a pain to have to type out 'protolanguage_of' every single time. Maybe just 'mem', so it's not clear enough to be misleading? — kwami (talk) 22:57, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Again, this emphasis on languages, rather than the language family of which this is the proto-language, is misplaced. (But the idea of avoiding confusion by being obscure is a novel one.) Kanguole 23:02, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand the objection. We link to the same article, whatever we call the parameter. 'Children' and 'family' are inappropriate because they contradict usage in other templates, not because they mislead the reader. There's no 'emphasis' on the languages except that we link to them, which is appropriate because the reconstruction can't exist without them. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The point is that what goes in the parameter is a language family, not a mere collection of languages, so the displayed label should be 'Language family' or 'Reconstructed family', not 'Descendant languages'. Then the parameter name should be reasonably mnemonic of the displayed label. Kanguole 23:14, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I see. But 'descendant languages' doesn't imply a 'mere collection' of languages, but languages with a common ancestor, which is rather the point. And both 'language family' and 'reconstructed family' are inaccurate, the first because it implies that the proto-language is a member of the family (rather like saying Latin is a Romance language), and the latter because it's not the family that's reconstructed. The family *is* the languages. By definition, the Italic languages (assuming they're a valid clade) are the descendants of Proto-Italic. — kwami (talk) 23:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Would 'descendant family' work? — kwami (talk) 00:11, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

It's clunky, but at least it indicates that the entry is a family. I will change the parameter name to |descendent_family= to match. 'members' is just nonsense. Kanguole 11:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Too long to type, and you've disrupted the transclusions. Why not wait until things settle down and use a bot to change it across the board, though if you want a really long param name, we'll need something shorter as an alt, and the template could accept both. — kwami (talk) 11:58, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

And do we want the family members to be required? Take Proto-Tocharian, for example, where they're redundant. — kwami (talk) 22:45, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

There's a syntax error w the listclass param I don't know how to handle. Mentioned on the template talk page. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

'Descendant family' (still thinking about a better name for display) should be obligatory; in standalone, it serves as a quick link, in sections it doesn't hurt.

I'm a bit hesitant about the "children", maybe we should just call it "Lower-order reconstructions" and list under it all existing recos with a valid wikilink (standalone or section)—if we really want to include them. –Austronesier (talk) 10:15, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I changed to your suggested wording. We can see how we like that. Re. the links, yes, that was my intention. These would be nav boxes among the reconstructions. Apart from IE, there aren't many families where there's much to navigate, but that could change. Especially if we link to sections, there's a lot that can be done with Papuan languages.

If we only list children with links, the good is that we don't get a bunch of possibly invalid names that don't go anywhere, and e.g. in Proto-Uto-Aztecan, with the single link to Proto-Nahuan, it's obvious that's what's going on. But if we have most of the children, as e.g. at Proto-Indo-Iranian, then that could cause some confusion. In that case I added Proto-Nuristani even though there's nothing to link to. But if we insist on not listing children unless there's something to link to, maybe that will encourage people to write on them? It should also make it easier to keep track of bogus articles, since crackpots will likely want to include their fantasies in the infoboxes. — kwami (talk) 10:29, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Listing children becomes complicated when there's no consensus about subgrouping. "Proto-Ugric", "Proto-Baltic" make sense for most of us on first inspection, but if you look deeper, adding these already means taking sides in favor of the traditional POV. But we just look first how it works out live, and then we can still make all due adjustments.

@Sagotreespirit: FYI - pinging you here, I'm sure you will like the new infobox. –Austronesier (talk) 10:51, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I just added an 'acceptance' param for things like Altaic, to parallel how we treat dubious families. There are other cases, e.g. proto-Finno-Ugric and proto-Tibeto-Burman, which may be the same as their supposed parent.

But, very often when there's disagreement about subgrouping, no-one's ever reconstructed those subgroups. Where they have, then we will usually have sources to be able to say something substantial about the issues involved, or at least to be able to cover the debate. Where there are Ethnologue-type subgroupings based on lexicostatistics or generic similarities without reconstruction, then those we wouldn't list in the infobox. That's why I wanted to specify that the children are protolanguages and not just divisions, and equally that the superior clades are protolanguages and not just replicate the hierarchies of our family articles. — kwami (talk) 10:54, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, agree, existing reconstructions—even if not yet adequately covered in WP—should be an inclusion criterion. Talking about "dubious", I thought of adding an infobox also to Proto-Dené–Caucasian language, but I just can't! –Austronesier (talk) 11:26, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I think Nuristani's been reconstructed, but not sure. Eastern Baltic has as well, I think.

Reasonable reconstruction using the comparative method, with regular sound correspondences. I believe Altaic qualifies, even if many doubt the results are valid. Perhaps Dene-Yeniseian does as well, though if all that's been done is the verbal suffixes, IMO that wouldn't be enough. We can leave it to others to evaluate whether the reconstructions are successful, but not everything needs a box. — kwami (talk) 11:32, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Any idea how to handle Proto-Norse? Is it more like Old English than an actual protolang? Same with Common Brittonic, though that seems to be clearer. Both should maybe be removed from the protolang category. — kwami (talk) 13:13, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Proto-Norse is both a fragmentarily attested language and a proto-language. Judging from the corpus of Proto-Nordic words floating around, reconstructed forms outweigh attested forms by a ratio of maybe 100:1 (just a wild guess). But attested relics nonetheless make it a real language, so the proto-language infobox feels out of place. –Austronesier (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay, removed. — kwami (talk) 04:30, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Good work guys. Glad you all followed up on my proposal, even though it was initially rejected. That's a fantastic infobox. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 10:08, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

National Merit Barnstar

		The Papua New Guinean Barnstar of National Merit
		Thank you for your many years of tireless work on articles of Papuan languages! Here's something to add to your long list of barnstars. (Although admittedly, this is just for "East New Guinea Highlands languages" and other Papuan languages on the eastern half of the island.) — Sagotreespirit (talk) 09:56, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
		this WikiAward was given to Kwamikagami by — Sagotreespirit (talk) on 09:56, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 10:17, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

hyperforeignism

Maté is a hypercorrection or hyperforeignism. That's referenced. While both are used in English, marketing tends to support the hyperforeignism, but it's no reason that we should. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:35, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

All the dictionaries do as well. If you disagree with standard English usage, you're pushing your opinion of what English should be, which is not how WP works. — kwami (talk) 22:38, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

And now, personal attacks on my ability to use a dictionary. This was resolved long ago. I suggest you move along. It will be reverted later. Cheers. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:39, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

It's hardly a personal attack to say you should be able to use a dictionary. You should. I checked five standard dictionaries, and they all disagree with you. Calling English orthography "hyperforeignism" doesn't change the fact that it's English orthography. You can campaign to reform it, but until you succeed we need to follow what is. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

In short, WP:NOTDICT and you're ignoring the hyperforeignism. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:40, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

DICT has nothing do to with this. Perhaps you should read that as well. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry. You're right. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:46, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

It's one thing to argue about which form is better supported by COMMON or some other WP naming convention, but it's a bit much to actually censor English to match its source languages, essentially a form of hypercorrection (like people who pronounce Paris "puh-REE"), and to not even allow common forms that readers will come across (and by your admission, if it's preferred by both marketers and dictionaries, probably the most common form). — kwami (talk) 22:55, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

"Punjabi script" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Punjabi script. Since you had some involvement with the Punjabi script redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Tsla1337 (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced information

Why are you adding unsourced, original research? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:39, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Why are you adding false information? I came here looking for a quotable source to support the repeated claim (e.g. on the BBC) that Swahili is an official language of the AU, and found that WP included a large amount of bullshit. Beside actually false claims, such as Swahili being an official language of the AU, there's a lot of wording that seems to have little actual meaning. For example, you changed it to say, "The African Union has defined a number of languages as working languages including African languages". What is that supposed to mean? Which "African languages"? How does the phrase "African languages" clarify the phrase "a number of languages"? They actually say, The working languages of the Union and all its institutions shall be, if possible, African languages, Arabic, English, French and Portuguese. They never clarify what "if possible" means in practice, and the way you changed it, it sounds like "African languages" are few enough that they can be the "number of languages" that function as the working languages of a govt organization, which isn't much different than presenting Africa as a country. Okay, it's incoherent and ill-defined in the original, but we're supposed to be presenting coherent information.

What any reader coming here for this info wants to know is which languages are the working languages of the AU, and we don't tell them. The Act was only published in English, French and Arabic. The amendment protocal was only published in English, French and Portuguese. (How does that even work, if you amend the Arabic act but the amendments aren't in Arabic? Or if you amend it in Portuguese, but the act itself doesn't exist in Portuguese? Or do these things exist, but the AU considers them to be of so little importance that it can't be bothered to upload them with the other language versions?) If you look at their website, the Portuguese and Swahili languages options only say "coming soon", which they've said for a year (and on the Swahili page, it says that in English!). The Arabic page is minimal, with most of it being in English. That is, if your language is Arabic, you can't navigate the "Arabic" page without reading English. Even the French page is half English. So it would seem that the actual working language is English, with French perhaps serving a supportive role, and little more than lip service being paid to anything else. Now, I'm all for developing African languages, and I hope that the support the AU says it's giving to fend off language extinction bears fruit, but when I go to an encyclopedia article for information, I'm looking for factual information, not aspirational goals being palmed off as fact. — kwami (talk) 03:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Please give me a diff where I added false information. If you're responding here, please use {{Ping|koavf}} so that I'll see it. As far as "African languages": that is what the source says. I am not personally responsible for writing any of the AU's constitutive documents. It seems like you have some misapprehensions about verifiability versus truth and what constitutes original research. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:15, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: Sorry, my bad. I saw the edit summary "Undid revision ... by Kwamikagami", which would've meant that you had re-added false information (that Swahili was designated a working language of the AU), but I see now that you corrected that. Though, your correction from "a number of languages ... including ABC and D as well as other African languages if possible" to "a number of languages ... including African languages, ABC and D as well as other African languages if possible" is a bit odd. For one thing, people will think that various unnamed African languages have been designated as working languages, which AFAICT they haven't, so it's rather misleading even though no longer actually false. — kwami (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Collaborating is what makes the encyclopedia work. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:57, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: I'm going to replace it with the actual AU wording. They haven't actually designated any working languages, so both of our fixes are actually false. — kwami (talk) 04:00, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for working with me to make Wikipedia better. Happy to have your help, Kwami. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Reply

Thank you for replying on the talk page where I invited you. Unfortunately, the expert editor you named there is indefinitely blocked as a suspected sock. Certes (talk) 09:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Something wrong when the people who most know what they're doing, and are cooperative and work well with others, are so frustrated trying to get anything done here that they feel the need to use socks. — kwami (talk) 10:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I was going to start a new topic, but what you're saying above sounds somewhat relevant. Currently there is an editor who is systematically rolling back everything i contribute, without consultation. Do you recall which editor above you are talking about, and whether they might have been harassed by the same editor? there was another user who'd seemed to have made constructive contributions to the pages i am working on who is labelled as a sock, i wonder if that's the same one. Irtapil (talk) 03:30, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Irtapil: I know who kwami referred to, no that's a completely different story. A collegial minded fellow-editor interested in linguistic topics, who got into some kind of shit because of alleged COI-issues. So Steve was actually not blocked for sockery.

The sock editor in the Urdu edit-range is a long-term abuser, User:Gotitbro, User:Kautilya3 and User:Uanfala know most about that case. It's not related to F&f's contributions there; F&f is a tough one with a tendency for occasional templer and high-falutin verbosity. Kwami and I had endless discussions with him, but I value his input. He has a strong POV, and many of his edits are guided by his strong feelings about things important to him (like Urdu literature), that's all. –Austronesier (talk) 12:59, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I am not exactly sure what he discussion here is about, can you clarify/expand a bit. If is about the long term Urdu POVPUSH sock, WP:LTA/SAMI, I can probably help. Gotitbro (talk) 13:05, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Gotitbro: No, it's just that Irtapil has a beef with F&f, and he thought that Sami might have experienced the same and was thus driven to sockery (which is of course not quite the case). –Austronesier (talk) 13:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Not sure how you can come to that conclusion after dealing with Fowler, he has a bias towards Urdu and Sami (the sock) is a blatant Urdu-POVPUSHER/vandal since the beginning. Not to mention Fowler has taken the bait of Sami's socks multiple times and gone on unrelated diatribes with other editors though triggers by the socks' trolling (for e.g. see no further than Talk:Urdu). Gotitbro (talk) 13:18, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm lost... can i have a glossary? POVPUSHER? just "point of view pusher"? what about COI?

what does {{tps}} do? i can only find a joke page on it Wikipedia:Talk_page_stalker

"The sock editor in the Urdu edit-range" who do you mean? is there someone i should avoid tagging to avoid causing trouble?

I thought F&F had a "Hindustani" bias, but i might be misinterpreting. I don't like their approach of deleting seemingly almost any substantial contribution of new material pending discussion. Partly personally, of course. But it also seems like it would cause the encyclopedia to stagnate, directly by making updates slower and tying up everything in endless debates, but also indirectly when new editors feel like their work is futile and unappreciated and give up and leave. Though maybe i'm reading too much into it, maybe it was just that i left the alphabet page messy, and maybe their other big rollbacks removed new material with strong biases that i failed to spot in a quick skim.

Irtapil (talk) 23:26, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Irtapil: Wikipedia does have a problem with driving away new editors who end up feeling that trying to make improvements is futile. A serious problem. I'm part of it myself, I fear. The project can't succeed without new blood.

'COI' is 'conflict of interest'. E.g., a politician or company editing their WP biography to say that they're the greatest ever. Usually it's more subtle than that, but it can be a real problem.

I don't know the Urdu sock.

'TPS' is just an abbreviation for the name of a template that explains why someone's commenting on a discussion they're not part of. It's not an acronym you need to know.

'NPOV' means 'neutral point of view'. It's one of the basic principles of WP. You're supposed to avoid a non-neutral POV, but no-one abbreviates it "NNPOV". Maybe they figure the two N's cancel each other out? Anyway, a POV-pusher is someone pushing a particular POV, which by implication is a non-NPOV. Someone repeatedly editing the Urdu articles to claim that Urdu is unrelated to Hindi would be a POV-pusher.

There are WP:Wikipedia abbreviations and WP:Glossary to answer your questions, but they're kinda overkill. I've been here years, and I don't know a fraction of them. — kwami (talk) 03:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Cauque Mayan

Hi kwami, I have come across this one here[13]. I'll gladly finish this, but do you remember the source article where the material came from (in case it's actually relevant for cleanup)? –Austronesier (talk) 08:16, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: sure, here's my edit in the source article. — kwami (talk) 08:20, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks! –Austronesier (talk) 08:24, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

IPA pronunciation and respell

Hi, sorry for bothering you again. A while ago (almost a year, actually) I asked you for the IPA pronunciation and respell of Onychopterella. Now I need the same for Roman Dacia, and I was wondering if you could help me again. By the way, is there a page where I can request these things in the future? Thanks in advance. Super Ψ Dro 07:37, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Lexico (the OED online)[14] has /ˈdeɪʃə/ as the primary pronunciation. The print OED has the same for Dacian, and doesn't have a variant with /s/. Webster's[15] has the same as the print OED. I'd ignore the variants with /i/ -- I don't know if Lexico has a real person pronouncing it, but Webster's certainly doesn't.

This agrees with what we have at the article Dacia,, I just removed the optional 'i' there.

In the future, you might check with the humanities reference desk or with the linguistic wikiproject, but I certainly don't mind a word or two every few months! — kwami (talk) 09:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

So "Roman Dacia" would be something like /ˈrəʊmən ˈdeɪʃə/? And how would the respell be? RO-man DAI-sha? And thanks, next time I'll go to that wikiproject! Super Ψ Dro 13:35, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Follow the links from the IPA/respelling and you'll get the keys. E.g., we spell the long O sound /oʊ/. (The set is available under your edit window, if you choose "IPA (English)" from the menu.) Same for respell -- DAY-shə. But I wouldn't bother with "Roman" -- per the MOS, we don't include common words that readers can be expected to know, or can get from an ordinary dictionary. "Dacia" is borderline in that regard, but probably acceptable because it's rare. — kwami (talk) 17:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, the article is currently a GAN and the reviewer said I should include "Roman" in the pronunciations, so I need it too. After searching for a while, I think the IPA pronunciation is now correct: /ˈroʊmən ˈdeɪʃə/. I found that the first "Roman" with əʊ is British English while the one with oʊ is American English, which (I think) is the one used by the article. However, I'm still unsure about the respelling. The Wikipedia page says "oʊ" is respelled as "oh", while "ə" is kept. This is therefore that I got: ROH-mən DAY-shə, which gives 34k results on Google. Is it correct now? Super Ψ Dro 23:49, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's fine, though I don't know what Ghits has to do with anything -- it's in the dictionary, doesn't matter if it gets 0 hits on Google. And it's not US or UK English, it's just English. As for the GAN reviewer, they evidently don't know the MOS, so I wouldn't listen to them. If you add the pronunciation to appease them, it might get deleted later as clutter, not that it matters. The pronunciation is at the main article Dacia. — kwami (talk) 05:01, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I'll ask him if he still want me to add the word. Thanks for the help! Super Ψ Dro 11:56, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Map request

Hi Kwamikagami,

I hope you are well. I am getting various LGBT-related articles ready for Pride month, including the article for the Equality Act. There is a map on there that needs a state updated. Virginia has passed the Virginia Values Act and the Governor signed the legislation into law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in all areas. The map is File:LGBT anti-discrimination law in the United States by state.svg . Virginia needs to be dark purple.

Thank you,

-TenorTwelve (talk) 06:49, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

No prob. — kwami (talk) 22:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks! (and Happy Pride Month!) -TenorTwelve (talk) 09:19, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

How do I make a map?

Hi Kwamikagami,

I've been wondering how to make a map for/on Wikipedia/Wikimedia. You might not need to personally teach me but I was wondering if you could direct me towards some resources on this? I've tried looking for resources but have found almost nothing and it almost seems like a secret knowledge of sorts. Do I need to download software for this? Thanks, -TenorTwelve (talk) 08:09, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Easiest to take the various blank maps on Commons and modify them, or take an existing WP map and modifying it. Depends on what the file format is. PNG and JPG files are easy enough to modify with the software you should have on your computer. (If not, search for image-editing freeware/shareware. GIMP may be good, but has a bit of a learning curve.) SVG files are harder. There aren't a lot of software options. The best is probably Inkscape. It's slow, but fairly easy to figure out simple things like copying the color of one country onto another, change the thickness of borders, move pieces around, etc. What's harder to do is to figure out is things like adding stripes when nothing in the map already has stripes that you can copy. In that case, best to find a different map that does what you want to do, then open it in a text editor to see how the stripes were created, and add that coding to your map. So you'll likely need to use a combination of Inkscape and a text editor. Not straightforward, and it can be frustrating until you figure it out, but not too bad to figure out the relatively small number of things we normally do with maps. If you get stuck, I can try to give you some tips. — kwami (talk) 08:25, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Inappropriate merge

Hi Kwamikagami, your merge of the set index article Rhexenor (mythology) into the disambiguation page Rhexenor, needs to be undone. Thanks. Paul August ☎ 14:59, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Why? — kwami (talk) 20:51, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

You should read Wikipedia:Set index articles in particular, the section "Set indexes and disambiguation". Basically set index articles (SIAs) and disambiguation pages (DABs) are different kinds of creatures (with different rules) and cannot be merged. Your merge ended up with the article Rhexenor being classified as both a DAB and a SIA, which is a no no. It also broke several rules regarding DABs:

1. One and only one link per entry.

2. No references.

3. No (with some exceptions) incoming links.

It was this last rule violation, that ended up catching my notice. Since another editor, Narky Blert, began correctly marking, what used to be valid links from other articles into the SIA Rhexenor (mythology), as needing to be disambiguated (see for example this edit). The reason is that most links to DABs are in error, and should be replaced with links to some article linked to by the DAB. However in this case no such article existed since you had made Rhexenor (mythology) a redirect to Rhexenor. I know this all can be a bit confusing at first. If anything I've said above is unclear please don't hesitate to ask. Regards, Paul August ☎ 10:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Paul August is correct. As he says, two major differences between DABs and SIAs are (1) every entry on a DAB page must link to a relevant article, either one about the topic itself or one where it is discussed; that does not apply to SIAs, and (2) DAB pages may not include references or external links; SIAs can and often do. Narky Blert (talk) 10:15, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Your page moves

Your recent page moves are out of process and inappropriate. You have been here long enough to know that. If you want an articles to be renamed, request so at WP:RM, not by attempting to game the system. ƏXPLICIT 11:40, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Your edits were irresponsible. You left redirects to red links, even in templates, that would have been bot-deleted if I hadn't cleaned up after you. And waiting a month for a discussion to correct a typo is a bit ridiculous. — kwami (talk) 17:39, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Tevita ʻAlokuoʻulu

Are you sure your move is correct? The surname is spelt ‘Alokuo’ulu (i.e. with the second mark not being an okina) by the Tongan Parliament. Cheers, Number 57

That's just how they write 'okina. They use an apostrophe and their word processor makes it curly, so it's a 6-shape at the beginning of a name but a 9-shape in the middle of a name. If you do a search for <'>, you'll see they're all apostrophes, and they're all 9-shaped in the middle of a name. — kwami (talk) 23:59, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Presumably that means Mele Siu’ilikutapu is wrong as it stands? Number 57 00:15, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Often people do use apostrophes when they're not typesetting professionally, but in that case you'd just use a straight apostrophe <'> on WP. Normally we fix them all to ʻokina, which you can input as {{okina}}. — kwami (talk) 00:19, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed move to Kauaʻi per MOS:HAWAII

Seems another user undid your move, which I believe to be correct. I've started a requested move discussion at Talk:Kauai#Requested move 5 July 2020. Hope you are able to participate in the discussion. Skyerise (talk) 19:43, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what your preferred method of talk page usage is. I replied on mine. Let me know if you'd prefer something else. I vaguely remember that I used to use some kind of notifying template but that was a while ago and I forget what it was... Skyerise (talk) 20:35, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Ayin apostrophes

Is your changing of the straight apostrophe in place of the ayin character related to some discussion affecting all relevant articles? If not, please discuss first as the articles are simply following the MoS guidelines: "The characters representing the ayin (ع) and the hamza (ء) are not omitted (except when at the start of a word) in the basic form, both represented by the straight apostrophe (')". The proper transliteration is simply added, or should be added, next to the Arabic name in the introductory sentence of the given article, e.g. Ma'an (Arabic: مَعان, romanized: Maʿān). —Al Ameer (talk) 04:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Al Ameer son: That MOS guideline might be new, or at least I don't recall ever seeing it. There has long been consensual use of distinct letters for ayin and hamza. That dates back to the founding of Wikipedia -- you can still find the old ASCII convention of <`> as an for ayin. Personally, I take exception to intentionally introducing errors into articles or article titles. Basically, we're saying that the Arabic language isn't important enough to represent accurately. Why is it that it would be culturally insensitive, if not actually racist, to mistranscribe Native American or Hawaiian names, but okay to mistranscribe Arabic names? — kwami (talk) 04:34, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Al Ameer son: Could you provide a link to that MOS guideline? Charles Essie (talk) 15:22, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@Charles Essie: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#Arabic transliteration. I used to include the diacritics for transliterated Arabic terms, but was informed during an FAC that the basic transliteration is recommended by this MOS guideline; also used to add a straight apostrophe (usually in place of ayin character) before the first letter of a word, as in 'Abud, but later I was again informed that the MoS recommends that this also be omitted. I don't care too much either way, though I've gotten used to the MoS, but generally I support a consistent style wherever possible. --Al Ameer (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Apology, please accept

Dear Friend, I am so sorry that I let you down, per assisting with the "curly apostrophe" project. I had no difficulty in changing apostrophes in the body of the article, but every time I tried to do a page move, the system would not accept the change, and continued to show a curly. This problem occurred only on my Ipad. When I tried to make the move changes on my much, much older desk computer, it seemed to work just fine. However, due to physical problems, I cannot sit at the desk computer for any useful length of time. This is not the first time I have had Ipad vs desk computer problems of this type. And I am too old and out of date on computer skills to figure it out. I got frustrated, and decided to try again in a few days, only to discover that it might be too late.

In the past, I have successfully worked on other editor's lists, to good effect. I am so sorry to let you down. Please do not judge others who offer to help you, on the basis of my failure. I should have contacted you right away, when I realized that I didn't possess the ability to help you because of my hardware problems.

In case you can still use my help, I have posted a query at WP:RM/TR, and will also do so at the Village Pump technical page.

Once again, my sincerely apologies, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 22:57, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Tribe of Tiger: Hey, no problem. And it's not 'too late', I only did the titles beginning with S. And even if you can only do the texts, not move the articles, that still helps. — kwami (talk) 00:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I am very pleased to do the texts, thank you! I am off to do the letter (R, first) etc, and will scan the both the title and article for the curlies. Best wishes, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 00:20, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Tribe of Tiger: In most cases, I didn't clean up the S's, just moved them. I deleted them from your sandbox but of course they're still there in the page history, if you want to review them as well. BTW, there's a bot AutoWikiBrowser that can assist with repetitive tasks. Once you get it set up, it will do most or even all of the editing, you just need to review for bugs and exceptions before hitting 'publish'. — kwami (talk) 00:40, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• • @Kwamikagami: Okay, I have finished all the R's that you gave me. Will check the history S's and also go thru the S's that remain in my sandbox, and report back when they are done. Same for the other sections, of course. Have been doing additional work along the way: sections, copyediting, filling bare refs, etc. Some of the curlies are hiding in sneaky places, but I have been diligent in searching for them! Will investgate AutoWikiBrowser, but will have to wait on that until Mon or so. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 06:31, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Apostrophes

I saw an note on ANI that you may have a list of articles that need the apostrophes changed. I am willing to help, if you have a list that I could work from. As long as my Ipad will support making the changes, I would enjoy doing so. I can't "sit" at my desk computer, but can work, prone, on the Ipad. in the past, I have assisted others in completing similar repetitive tasks. Let me know if I can help. Best, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 00:23, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

See your sandbox! — kwami (talk)

FYI the best way to get noncontroversial moves done, if you can't yourself, is by asking a page mover or posting at WP:RM/TR. (t · c) buidhe 04:34, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe and Kwamikagami Thanks, Buidhe, for this suggestion. I posted at WP:RM/TR. Anthony Applegate copied my query to WP:AN, and QEDK advised me to turn off the Smart Punctuation setting on my Ipad. Evidently, this is an issue throughout other Apple Os(sp?) devices. It worked perfectly, and I thought I should tell both of you about it, for future use. Regards, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 03:31, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I've been doing that for ones that are blocked. But there are problems with some of these titles beyond the curly apostrophe, e.g. being bad a translation from an article on another-language WP, so they should be individually reviewed. — kwami (talk) 04:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Update per curly apostrophes

Okay, so far I have "done" the S's( from history in my sandbox), R's, P's and N's. At some point in the P's, I resolved the problem regarding moving the pages, per my device problems, see above discussion.

Of course, I had to try it out, and the "move" worked well, except for the fact that AFTER a page is moved, a box pops up and asks me to "do things" about which I have no clue! I had no desire to mess about with images, but on several articles, I thought it was safe to move a simple stub.

Do you want me to continue to correct Curlies by making "moves" here and there, or will these hit and miss moves make your overall task more difficult? The Curlies in the bodies of the text are no problem...plus it is very enjoyable to copyedit, fix refs, add sections, etc. I also enjoy smoothing-out the prose of ESL editors.

So, should I try to complete the "seemingly simple moves", or will it be easier if I leave them alone?

Thanks, again, for allowing me to work on this project. I am really enjoying it! Now working on the M's....Regards, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 01:30, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Go ahead and move as many articles as you like. Some you won't be able to, because there will already be a redirect at that name, but the more you move the less work for the rest of us. They should all be fairly straight-forward -- English apostrophe-s, French c'est, that kind of thing. You can always leave them if you're not sure. — kwami (talk) 20:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, that helps, will do...Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 05:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:ANI

Please stop immediately with wholesale moving articles from straight apostrophes to curled ones. I asked for an urgent block at WP:ANI. Debresser (talk) 17:06, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Same for adding an apostrophe to indicate the Hebrew letter ayin. Which is against WP:HEBREW. Debresser (talk) 17:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I haven't moved any articles to curled apostrophes. In fact, I've been moving hundreds from curled to straight apostrophes. — kwami (talk) 22:26, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Then who made this move? Debresser (talk) 18:36, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I did, of course. But those are not apostrophes. You speak Hebrew, so do I need to explain the difference? Which BTW was already explained to you at ANI. Pop them into the search window if you don't believe me. — kwami (talk) 00:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I saw that it mentioned the ʻOkina, however, I fail to understand 1. why you think a letter or diacritic from Polynesian languages is relevant to Hebrew 2. why you ignore WP:HEBREW, which states clearly that the ayin should not be reflected in English transliteration. Debresser (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

In regards to 1, the key is that it is a letter. Okina just happens to be a colloquial and unambiguous way of referring to that letter, which is used in the alphabet or transliteration of many languages, including Hebrew. As for 2, WP:HEBREW not only doesn't clearly say that, it explicitly gives examples in contradiction of that assertion. VanIsaac_WS^cont 18:02, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Debresser, in many fonts an ʻokina and a quote mark look the same, but in other fonts they are graphically distinct. Similarly, for Hebrew, an ʼaleph and ʽayin will look like quote marks or apostrophes in many fonts, but not all. In some fonts, Greek alpha and Latin 'a' look the same, but that doesn't make them the same letter.

As for WP.HEBREW, indeed I wasn't aware of that. But I didn't argue with you about reverting my edit either. Though as Vanisaac points out, WP.HEBREW is rather confused, and contradicts itself. In the table, it says that ʼaleph and ʽayin are to be ignored in transcription, as you say, but then it goes on to give multiple examples where they are not ignored, though they're treated as punctuation rather than letters -- so that an actual apostrophe needs to be transcribed as a double quotation mark to keep it distinct from a letter-apostrophe. In modern Ashkenazi Hebrew, ʼaleph and ʽayin are pronounced the same, so it makes sense to transcribe them the same (though they're consonants, not punctuation marks as WP.HEBREW transcribes them). But in Biblical Hebrew they were not, so there's also that consideration. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure the aleph and ayin were not pronounced the same in Biblical Hebrew, including all its variations, but that is a sidepoint. I don't understand why User:Vanisaac thinks there are contradictions in WP:HEBREW regarding that he ayin should not be pronounced. I have the feeling he is mistaking the apostrophe as a divider as though it were an indication of the ayin. Debresser (talk) 21:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Debresser: They are not pronounced the same in all varieties of Modern Hebrew even today, and were clearly pronounced differently back when the original Hebrew was a mother tongue. But if as you say the apostrophe in Yisra'el is actually that -- a punctuation mark separating two vowels, [jisra.el], and does not represent a glottal stop consonant the way Hawaiian ʻokina does, [jisraʔel] (or maybe there is a [ʔ], but (a) it's ignored in transcription, and (b) vowel sequences are separated by apostrophes to keep them legible, regardless of whether there's a [ʔ] there, so that [aʔel] and [ael] would both be transcribed a'el) -- then I completely misunderstood that and IMO it needs to be clearly stated at HEBREW. — kwami (talk) 21:07, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

HEBREW says, Between a shva and a vowel sound or between nikud and a vowel sound, an apostrophe will be used to indicate a short stop. Thus: mal'akh.

What is a "short stop" if not the consonant ʼaleph? That does seem to contradict the table, but again the whole presentation is rather confused. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Of course I agree that there are variations of modern Hebrew where the aleph and the ayin are pronounced differently. I myself use it sometimes for stress or to show off.

Yes, the apostrophe is mostly used to separate vowels. I am not linguist, but this seems to be called hiatus.

I have seen the apostrophe being used to indicate the ayin, on some roadsigns or in certain publications, but not commonly, and certainly not according to WP:HEBREW.

The short stop mentioned in WP:HEBREW is simply a division between syllables, where the aleph as mater lectionis can occur at the beginning of a syllable.

I find it hard to imagine an example of the aleph being used as a glottal stop in Hebrew, although maybe I know an example in Biblical Hebrew. The ayin however is a glottal consonant in many variations of Hebrew. Debresser (talk) 22:07, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I'm going to take a stab at clarifying HEBREW so people like me won't get confused in the future. — kwami (talk) 07:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Debresser: so in the example mal'akh (מַלְאָךְ), the apostrophe indicates that it's syllabified mal-akh instead of ma-lakh?

Re. alef for glottal stop being rare, I suppose that depends on which reading tradition you're used to. Back when Hebrew was a spoken language (Biblical Hebrew in that sense, as the Hebrew spoken by the people who wrote most of the Hebrew portions of the OT), it was almost always a glottal stop. I've been working on a bit of the Song of Songs, and in 8 lines alef appears 17 times. In 13 of those it indicates a simple glottal stop, in 2 a geminate glottal stop, and in 2 a long o vowel.

In modern colloquial written Hebrew, in a para from Etgar Keret, alef occurs 17 times in word-medial position, and ayin 8 times. These correspond to 21 glottal stops in careful speech, or 75% of alefs, in the standard accent where ayin is glottal stop rather than an pharyngeal, though my understanding is that they tend to be elided when not speaking formally. — kwami (talk) 05:40, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, mal-akh.

So perhaps I don't understand what a glottal stop is. Debresser (talk) 18:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@Debresser: Glottal stop is a catch in the throat that can be pretty obvious when you hear it, but people can be rather sloppy distinguishing it from hiatus when explaining things verbally. There's a YouTube video on Hawaiian, v = VEQw3_JQTK8, that at about 1m contrasts pau with two vowels in hiatus from paʻu with the same vowels separated by a glottal stop.

If there's a bit of silence between two vowels due to a catch in the throat, you're making a glottal stop, while if they run smoothly into each other, you're not -- they're in hiatus. There are supposedly rules in Dutch for when you make a glottal stop between certain vowels and when you don't, but I don't know how reliable or consistent they are. I don't know if it makes any difference in Hebrew. In English, Hawaii is pronounced without glottal stop by most speakers, but with a glottal stop between the two i's, Hawaiʻi, by Hawaiians (including English-speaking Hawaiians) -- but either way the a and the first i are in hiatus. Japanese and Swahili are notable for all possible sequences of vowels occurring in hiatus. For example, in Japanese ao 'blue' (noun) and aoi 'blue' (adj), the vowels run smoothly into each other -- they're kept distinct but there's no catch in the throat between them. I'm sure you can find sound files of that word online. Pronouncing them with a glottal stop would be very wrong. Again, I don't know if it matters in Hebrew -- if a glottal stop is always possible between vowels, but not required, then it's rather moot whether the apostrophe transcribes glottal stop or hiatus. — kwami (talk) 08:50, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

The short stop in the example at WP:HEBREW "be'er" is indeed a short stop, so what you call a glottal stop, not a hiatus. That should have been clear from the fact that it says that there is a stop. In informal speech it can sometimes become very short, as is the way of informal speech, but it is there.

I have a follow up question. If I understand correctly what you explain, then between two identical vowel sounds there can be no hiatus, only a glottal stop, otherwise they would merge into one long sound. Correct? By the way, the two vowel sounds in "be'er" are not identical in pronunciation, and there is definitely a stop between them. By the way by the way, the aleph in "be'er" is a mater lectionis for the second "e" sound, but does not indicate in itself the glottal stop. Debresser (talk) 13:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Debresser: AFAIK, the aleph in באר is not a mater lectionis for the e in the second syllable, but represents the glottal stop preceding the e. If you compare it e.g. to האיש, here the yod is the mater lectionis, and aleph the glottal stop. The e in באר does not take a mater lectiones, and is represented by tsere in nikud. It feels like a mater lectionis as it enables us to articulate the second vowel, but actually only marks its onset. –Austronesier (talk) 10:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Does mal'akh also have a glottal stop, then?

Re two identical vowels, there are languages that clearly have double vowels in hiatus. (There's a dip in intensity between the vowels, what you might hear as a syllable break, but no stop or silence.) Other languages clearly have a long vowel instead, e.g. when two words come together, one ending in [a] and the other beginning in [a], the result is a long [aː]. In some cases there's even a 3-way distinction of short [a], long [aː] and double [aa]. I believe Hawaiian is one. But in many languages the situation is ambiguous between long [aː] and double [aa], or authorities make conflicting claims, or may describe what they believe the underlying situation is rather than the pronunciation at the surface. — kwami (talk) 01:21, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: That sounds strange. Why would the aleph represent a glottal stop that precedes it. Take for example בראשית, where there is a stop after the "b" and no aleph.

There is a small stop in "mal-akh", yes. If there is only one kind of stop, then it is glottal.

Interesting. In Dutch the "aa" is one sound, distinct from the "a". Not two sounds.

By the way, no need to ping me. I always follow pages where I post. Debresser (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Alef was originally a glottal stop, not a vowel, with any associated vowel unwritten. I think the matres lectionis uses came in pretty early, certainly in biblical times, though I thought the matres were originally he, waw and yod, not alef and ayin, which became matres much later? I don't recall. AFAIK alef and ayin are silent in Ashkenazi Hebrew, in orthography they're just carriers for the niqqud, but I don't know about Israeli.

Re. בראשית, you mean it's b, schwa, glottal stop, r? Maybe because the ב is a prefix? It's presumably simply coincidence that there happens to be an alef later in the word. The dictionary just has bereshit or breshit, though, no glottal stop.

In Dutch, orthographic aa is one sound, but what happens when you put a word ending in a and a word beginning with a together, maybe adjective and noun? Do they merge into a single sound? If they stay distinct, they might be separated by a glottal stop or might not. That's parallel to the question here. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, in Ashkenazi Hebrew they are silent. In Sephardi Hebrew the ayin is sometimes a guttural sound.

Yes, b, schwa, glottal stop, r. Some stress the stop more, others less, but it is there.

They might merge, with our without a stop, depending on the speaker. Debresser (talk) 20:53, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

RM closure lacking signature

In case you received a ping and are wondering what this is about, please take a look at what the page looked like before my edits. Because you didn't use "subst:", there was no signature or record of the time and date of closure of that RM. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:04, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. — kwami (talk) 19:04, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

LGBT Rights in Sudan

Unfortunately, my source is currently not available due to technical issues. The issue is quite complicated because many sources are simply wrong. Even a German source firstly said the maximum penalty would be seven years, but they corrected their article after a few hours.

https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=36601

„In einer vorherigen Version hatte es geheißen, dass die Maximalstrafe sieben Jahre Haft sind. Tatsächlich kann nach der dritten Verurteilung lebenslang verhängt werden. Wir haben den Fehler korrigiert.“

Sudans LGBT Organisation Bedayaa stated every change of Article 148. Currently it is not available as I said, but I will hand you over the link as soon as possible.

It is clearly stated, that they just eliminated the word „death“ at the third paragraph of Article 148 (2c). So the maximum penalty after a third offense is still life imprisonment. The second offense is to be punished with seven years in jail now.

Other sources:

https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/sudan-drops-flogging-and-death-penalty-from-its-law-against-gay-sex/

I guess Reuters is a good and reasonable source:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-lgbt-rights-trfn/great-first-step-as-sudan-lifts-death-penalty-and-flogging-for-gay-sex-idUSKCN24H30J

„The punishments have been reduced to prison terms, ranging from five years to life.“

--Böses Buschwerk123 (talk) 05:08, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, none of your sources are reliable. On your talk page I mentioned things GSN and Reuters got wrong in their articles, and so how they aren't credible. And your German source said the penalty was for "Unzucht" (they even put it in quotes), which I assume is supposed to be zina but is not what the Sudanese law says. So even after 'correcting' the article they still got it wrong. — kwami (talk) 05:29, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

„Under Sudan's old sodomy law, gay men faced 100 lashes for the first offense, five years in jail for the second and the death penalty the third time around. The punishments have been reduced to prison terms, ranging from five years to life.“

I think the statement of Bedayaa claimed, that they eliminated the five years max penalty of the second paragraph. Because of this, now there are 7 seven years jail.

I mean now we got a few reasonable sources. I think it is enough, don’t you think so? 👀

--Böses Buschwerk123 (talk) 05:21, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

What's the source for this last quote?

No, Bedayaa didn't eliminate the five-year max penalty of the second paragraph, they just added the seven year max penalty. So they contradict themselves. Did they forget to remove the five in para 2, or did they get the paragraph wrong and intend to add the 7 to para 3, as other sources have reported? When we have to guess whether 7 + 5 means 7 or 5, we're engaged in CRYSTAL and can't conclude anything from the article.

I reworded the lead to say that we don't know what the max penalty is, but it may be life.

This reliance on unreliable sources has gotten us into trouble with several of these articles. It would be nice to get the UAE straightened out, for example. A straightforward reading of the law makes it obvious that they have the death penalty. But evidently legal experts in the country are divided as to what the law means. — kwami (talk) 05:29, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

You did a great job with your last editing. 👌🏽 We have to wait now until we get more reliable sources. :) Böses Buschwerk123 (talk) 09:22, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Your interpretation makes the most sense, and I suspect you're right. It's just hard to know. — kwami (talk) 10:01, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

(For page-stalkers, Bedayaa got back to me and said that Böses's interpretation is correct, that the penalties are <=5yrs, <=7yrs, and life, with no room for lenience in a 3rd conviction, though no cases of the last are known. — kwami (talk) 05:40, 22 July 2020 (UTC))

Heads up

The user that replied to you on Talk:Phoenician alphabet (I don't want to name or ping him) has been displaying extremely aggressive, toxic and mocking behaviour against every single person who he disagrees with ever since the discussion about this topic started on Talk:Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet#Redirection/merge_to_Phoenician_alphabet (I don't know if you lurked there before, if not, brace yourself). He is not contributive to the discussion at all and only attacks contributive users by making passive agressive remarks and telling people to "go and read", even outright refusing to provide evidence. I fear in the end nothing about the pages can be improved because "no concensus has been reached", because of a toxic user that keeps saying no to everything. Maybe something needs to be done about it at some point. Glennznl (talk) 00:18, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Glennznl: Consensus doesn't mean unanimity. WP isn't a democracy. If someone doesn't provide evidence, their 'vote' doesn't count. Though I am curious if they think Georgian and Mongol are written in 'the Alphabet'. — kwami (talk) 00:24, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Good to know that. I think I made a strong case and no objections seem to be made so far. I think we could move forwards soon. (Btw what happens if nobody responds on your evidence. I made a comment at Li_people#Name_of_this_ethnic_group but nobody is responding so far. The discrepancy between "Li people" and "Hlai language" seems off).

Yea it doesn't make sense at all, I wonder if this user also talks about a "Chinese alphabet" or "Hiragana alphabet". I think the Wiki usage is the best we have. Glennznl (talk) 10:00, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Glennznl: You can make a formal move request, see what evidence people bring to that. Personally, I'm opposed to changing the names of peoples and languages every other year out of a patronizing desire to protect the ignorant natives, so that in the end no-one knows who they are because they go by too many names to keep track of (funny, no-one seems to propose rectifying the name of the Germans, Basques, Greeks, Albanians, Finns, Armenians, Egyptians, Indians, Tibetans, Chinese or Koreans), but if a name is well established in English we should go by that.

BTW, you don't need to ping me on my own talk page, though you might want to do so on yours if you answer there, in case I'm not watching it. — kwami (talk) 10:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Very common and established names don't really change anymore no, but others like Gypsy-Romani, Eskimo-Inuit and Bushman-Khoisan didn't happen long ago. I submitted a contested move request, we'll see.

So far the discussion on Phoenician seems quite positive besides the certain user only discussing terminology. I'll look for more sources that show the same "Canaanite script ancestor" with whatever name they use this time. Glennznl (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Glennznl: A lot of Eskimo call themselves 'Eskimo' because they're not Inuit (that's only ever worked in Canada), and a lot of Bushmen call themselves 'Bushmen' because 'San' is an ethnic slur. (There's no such thing as a Khoisan.) In fact, the idea that the name 'Bushman' is somehow racist is itself a judgement that their culture is inferior, and that it would be 'racist' to call them what they are. — kwami (talk) 19:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I filed the contested move request the wrong way and accidentally put it in the fast lane instead of putting it up for discussion, woops. Nobody seems to be complaining though for now, so yeah uhm that happened. Glennznl (talk) 10:14, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

My tasks

I am continuing to work on the list provided. Once I got over being nervous about moving article names, I started moving them, and also began going back through the list again...both to move the ones I missed, and to backcheck my work. I will post a progress report soon, in an hour or so.

This is a very rewarding editing task, and I thank you for allowing me to help you. After the basic housekeeping work of converting/fixing the curlies, I have filled in bare refs, fixed deadlinks...then the "fun" starts, with copyediting, etc., which I enjoy.

Today, while going back through previously visited articles, in order to "move", I find that you have arrived before me. I want to let you know that I am still on the job, despite my slowness. Thanks again, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 05:52, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, the list was arranged thus: S, R, P, N, M, J, I, and G. I started " moving" somewhere in the P's, and certainly by the Ns. I have started going through from the beginning, to move the ones I missed. The only section I have not touched at all as of yet is the G section. If you do the moves ahead of me, I will still care for the curlies in the text, as well as the other editing. Hope this meets with your approval. Thanks, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 06:14, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

You don't need my permission to do this!

I checked the R's to see how they were going, noticed most were done but not all. I didn't know if you'd run into trouble, so I finished the rest. Two I couldn't move, and put in a move request for. I'll leave the rest for you. There are others I'm working on, with names in Uzbek, Arabic, Polynesian or Athabaskan languages that aren't so straightforward (the curly is supposed to be a letter, not a diacritic punctuation mark, and often they also have the shape wrong), so I'm going through those as well. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the R moves. I wasn't sure exactly when I had started moving, wholeheartedly. On a couple of pages, when I tried to move, I have received a "not happening, fella" notice. I will check back from the Ps and onward, make a list and contact the "move requests" to ask for assistance, since that's how you handle them. The diacritics are waaayyyy over my head, so glad WP has someone on board with the knowledge. (Now I need to read out about Athabaskan! Never heard of it! A learning experience opportunity.) Will keep you posted. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 07:01, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Re:Athabaskan...Ah, yes. At one point (Aug 2019) I did a good bit (for me) of needed copyediting and rearranging on North American fur trade. The "tribes" of Chipewyan and Gwich'in feature in the article. (Also the Ojibwe, but this must be a different language group.)Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 07:34, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Finished

I have completed the tasks for the list of articles. I filed only one article at RM, as you had already filed the others that I was tracking. Are there any more to be done? Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 20:37, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

If you know Arabic script, there are a bunch that have apostrophes, quote marks or back-ticks (`) that need to be corrected to proper ʽayin or hamza. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I sincerely regret the fact that I can only navigate in English. Arabic is beyond me. Unless the changes are something rote, and visually obvious, I cannot help. (This would be like copying Hebrew scriptures by "drawing" the letters. That didn't turn out well, centuries past.)

Anyway, I did enjoy working on the project, and learning...Regards, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 21:16, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

"Sen:esepera" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Sen:esepera. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 30#Sen:esepera until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 07:47, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Hamza for curly apostrophes?

Hello, I have questions about your replacement of all straight apostrophes in the Guarani language article.

• Why use {{hamza}} instead of just inserting a unicode curly apostrophe, like ’?
• Is it actually correct wiki style to use the curly apostrophe? I understand there's debate on this, but as far as I can tell the current style guide still says to use the straight apostrophe.
• I noticed in your edit you referenced the Academy of the Guarani Language (Guarani Ñe'ẽ Rerekuapavẽ). Judging from comments above in response to User:Debresser, it seems like you meant to imply that the Academy recommends usage of a special character to represent the puso, such as the above transliterated hamza or perhaps a saltillo, and not just a simple apostrophe, stylized as a curly apostrophe as needed. But looking through their resolution N° 71, which regulates official Guarani spelling, I see no indication that this is intended. In fact, looking through their other publications, they vary freely between ', ’, and even ‘, which seems to point more to a simple apostrophe which they often render as a curly apostrophe just by letting their word editor change it. Were you referencing some particular document that's clearer on the intended typography? I haven't been able to find one, and in their published grammar all they say about it is that people often vary in the character they use to type it.

Mauricio Maluff (talk) 2020-07-21T18:04:54‎

@Mauricio Maluff: It's a Unicode thing. Unicode assigns different code points for letters and punctuation, but it won't necessarily be followed by people online. In print, of course, it makes no difference.

The MOS is for curly apostrophes (that is, for punctuation), and this isn't an apostrophe. Per Unicode, we should use a letter. If it's a straight mark, then we should use {{saltillo}}, if 9-shaped, then {{hamza}}, and if 6-shaped, then {{okina}}. This can be important, as there are orthographies that contrast them. I don't know which is best for Guarani, but when Guarani Ñeʼẽ Rerekuapavẽ is careful, they use the 9-shape. If they have other recommendations, please let me know. — kwami (talk) 05:34, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I see, thank you. Even in that case, is there a reason not to insert a U+02BC character directly like so: ʼ? My worry is that regular users trying to contribute, who are not familiar with the unicode standard on this (myself included), will be confused to see the hamza template in, e.g., mba{{hamza}}e. Whereas they wouldn't notice the difference if it were written as mbaʼe. I think you're right that the Academy aims for the 9-shaped puso, even if they don't always follow through in their own publications. To be honest, I would actually lean towards just using the straight ', U+0027, just like you use for English contractions, if only because most people who know about Guarani enough to contribute will be using a Latin American keyboard, which has U+0027, but neither U+02BC nor U+2019. That's how most users type Guarani in practice, and it's what the Avañe'ẽ wiki uses throughout. Was there a discussion of this somewhere? (Apologies if I've forgotten how to have a discussion on here, since I haven't edited much in over 10 years.) --Mauricio Maluff Masi (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mauricio Maluff: There's no problem with editors using ASCII. It can always be cleaned up by others. The problem with using a hamza directly is that it's difficult to distinguish visually from a curly apostrophe, making manual clean up difficult. A bot would distinguish them, but it can be difficult to visually verify what the bot is doing.

No WP agreement on Guarani that I know of, but we do have agreement for other languages with glottal stop such as Hawaiian and several Canadian and Mexican languages. If the saltillo would be best, that's fine, but {{saltillo}} should be used rather than ASCII. But if the the straight apostrophe we see is just an ASCII substitute for ease of typing, not intended as a saltillo and not used in professional publication, then I wouldn't think that's something we'd want to emulate. Could be that Guarani doesn't have an official orthographic convention for this. Probably worth discussing to see what the evidence is. — kwami (talk) 18:47, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's very probable that there is no official convention, just because editors in Paraguay genuinely can't afford to pay someone to think much about typography (and sadly, it shows). I do think that, if there were one, the convention would be to use U+02BC, ʼ. So go ahead, I suppose, and thanks for taking the time to clarify. — Mauricio Maluff Masi (talk) 01:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Template:Lhr and Template:Rhr

I pondering how these templates might be used and whether or not they are needed. MOS:APOSTROPHE says we should use {{hamza}} and {{ayin}}, which would make {{lhr}} redundant. I like the idea of using the transliterated character name—rather than the Unicode character name—because it makes it easy to change which Unicode character we use. It also makes it easy to verify that the correct character is being used, for folks familiar with the language but not with Unicode. Presumably we'd want to do the same thing and use {{aleph}} rather than {{rhr}}? Glottal stops in different languages are encoded differently, so e.g. {{okina}} wouldn't use either of these characters. Are there other languages you were thinking of that have glottal stops where we'd want to make more templates? Or was there some other rationale for making lhr and rhr? -- Beland (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@Beland:. Hi. {{ayin}} and {{lhr}} produce different characters, ⟨ʽ⟩ and ⟨ʿ⟩. Likewise {{hamza}} and {{rhr}}: ⟨ʼ⟩ and ⟨ʾ⟩. "Aleph" would be the same as "hamza", but IMO wouldn't be as good a name because of the use of aleph as a mater lectionis. Though it doesn't really matter. Currently, the transcriptional/alphabetical letters use the letter names, parallel to {{okina}}, while the more formal transliterational characters use the Unicode abbreviations. I think it would be confusing to mix up the conventions, though you might have a better idea that 'lhr' and 'rhr'. — kwami (talk) 05:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Romanization of Russian

Regarding [this edit]: do you mean that пятка is transliterated as p'atka? In some systems (e. g. USSR AS 1951–1957) it is indeed so. But usually the apostrophe or prime is used only for ь, whereas я and ю are transliterated identically regardless of their function: pyatka (BGN/PCGN), pjatka (UNGEGN), pi͡atka (ALA/LC)... Burzuchius (talk) 20:26, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I'll fix that if you haven't already. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Justin Mana’o

Your page move was undiscussed and unexplained; I have reverted. Please use WP:RM. GiantSnowman 10:23, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

The page violated the MOS. We don't use curly apostrophes on WP, and his name does not contain a punctuation mark but an 'okina. — kwami (talk) 12:48, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Then a) please try explaining that from the start and b) stop moving pages without discussion. GiantSnowman 14:38, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and maybe link to the MOS in questions??? GiantSnowman 14:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Request

Hi Kwami. Can you change "Show Dog-Universal Music" to "Show Dog Nashville"? 2402:1980:82F6:AB87:F6EC:E2E9:4948:D559 (talk) 07:41, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Could I ask why? According to the article, it's at the correct name. — kwami (talk) 07:47, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		Because you do an incredible amount of good work, and I am more or less in awe at how much you know. Also, I think you do not have enough barnstars. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 05:06, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! If I get enough I might be able to build a barn out of them and save on rent. — kwami (talk) 05:36, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Incomplete citation

Do you by any chance remember which source you used here, at Shipibo language#Dialects? It's not listed in the article's bibliography, so the citation is nearly useless without more info. Glades12 (talk) 10:40, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

That's the claim that it's a dialect, ref at at Panoan languages, [16]. 'No data' from Loukotka (1968) on same page. — kwami (talk) 11:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Which page(s)? Also, "Luokotka (1968)" is not listed in either article's reflist or bibliography. Glades12 (talk) 14:06, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Spelled "Shipinawa", as a Shipibo dialect, on p. 14. Listed as an ethnonym 'purported' to be a Panoan lang on p. 109, same under the spelling "Chipinawa" on p. 15. (Identity of the two stated again on p. 77 and 89.) Just do a search for "ipin".

That should be enough, but the other ref is Loukotka, Čestmír (1968) Classification of South American Indian languages, UCLA. — kwami (talk) 22:51, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Voiceless and voiced upper-pharyngeal stop pages creation

I, the creator of these two pages, came to say thank you just because you expanded and cited them. Blockman9000 (talk) 15:05, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Kwami, sometimes I think you'd do better as a science journalist than a Wikipedian

You clearly have a bug in your ear about a whole host of technical issues that are WAY beyond Wikipedia's remit. I would suggest hunting down all of these feloniously erroneous scientists and lecturing them soundly on exactly how wrong they are. Perhaps you could corral them into an isolated manor ala "And Then There Were None" and pick them off one by one until they agree to publish retractions in reliable sources. Then, with those reliable soures, maybe Wikipedia could do something about it. Serendi^podous 14:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I wonder why we would want to add obvious nonsense when it fails notability. According to that article, Earth is not a planet. The authors will of course say they didn't mean it to be taken literally, but using scientific language when you don't mean it is at best misleading. If others pick up on it and it becomes notable, fine, but meanwhile why should WP be a vessel for scientific nonsense? — kwami (talk) 21:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly notable enough for Alan Stern to promote it six ways from Sunday. I doubt it will ever gain any traction, but it's still the most viable alternative to the IAU's definition. Serendi^podous 21:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Notability isn't people promoting their *own* ideas! And even so, Stern contradicts it six ways to Sunday.

In fact, I agree with what Sterns is trying to say, and it's not just him, but many planetary scientists. He just doesn't say it in that article. There are other summaries of the same idea (including by Sterns) that aren't self-contradictory, and don't unintentionally claim that there are no planets in the Universe. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I've tried to change the article to cover the POV rather than just that editorial, which IMO isn't in itself notable. The POV certainly is, and IMO deserves more coverage on WP. — kwami (talk) 05:41, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

A definition published the next year by some of the same authors is actually functional, so I changed to that one. It still doesn't support Stern's list of 100+ Solar planets, but then no definition does. — kwami (talk) 05:01, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Les Dialogues d'Evhémère

Hi a few weeks ago you moved a page I created a while back, but as far as I can see, the title you moved it to is the same one as I gave it, Les Dialogues d'Evhémère. Can I ask what that was about? All the best Mccapra (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, you used a curly apostrophe, which we don't use on WP. — kwami (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Ah ok thanks. It’s default on my iPad unfortunately. Mccapra (talk) 12:32, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Polio vaccines

(Answering here) - the vaccine strategies are always being reevaluated, but there is currently no plan to drop PV3 from the vaccine prior to the cessation of all vaccination. I suspect that there will be hesitance to make any change regarding PV3 after the PV2 removal went so badly. It cuts both ways. oPV3 is a lot less prone to reversion mutations, so cVDPV3 outbreaks are a lot less common, and because it does not have the high asymptomatic rate of cVDPV2, when it happens it is easier to find and quash. This means that it should be easier to remove from the vaccine, but also that removing it is less of a priority. Regarding your other question, yes, if your mopup successfully achieves enough vaccination to eliminate a cVDPV outbreak in a country, it is gone from that country, but there are two problems. First, viruses do not respect borders, neither international borders not the limits set for the mop-up vaccination campaign, and there is a finite chance it will spread beyond the mopup cordon. Secondly, there is always going to be spillover of the vaccine at the edges of the mopup area, for example when they tried mopping up the latest cVDPV in Pakistan, they started picking up the oPV2 in Afghanistan, even though it had not been administered there. That is a huge problem, because this spillover is now running through an entirely unvaccinated population, and you will likely get fresh cVDPV strains arising. Just last year (or was it two years ago), spillover of oVP2 used in Congo caused numerous new cVDPV2s in Angola. Agricolae (talk) 19:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I wish we had that level of detail in the article. IMO this is one of the more important things going on in the world at the moment, doesn't get the coverage it deserves. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Given your interest, the following summary of immune-deficient polio cases may be worth a read: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928a4.htm?s_cid=mm6928a4_w

Agricolae (talk) 01:22, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Very interesting. Thank you! — kwami (talk) 02:15, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

A Special Barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar For creating the Tyap language article. Thanks! Kambai Akau (talk) 20:22, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 02:16, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Manenguba languages

The article Manenguba languages has recently been extended quite a bit and is no longer a stub. Since you are one of the contributors, would you care to assess it in its present state, or suggest improvements? Since I wrote most of it, I don't think I can assess it myself. Kanjuzi (talk) 12:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Apostrophes 2

Okay, I have finished, except for three articles:

• Batter_my_heart,_three-person’d_God, Until recently,(5 July 2020) this title was a redirect to Holy Sonnets, but now it has its own article. I still need to go through the text a third time, with a careful eye, as it has single quote marks and double quote marks all through, and I may have missed one. Listed at requested moves.

• Johns_Hopkins_Children’s_Center, Cannot move. Listed at requested moves.

• United_Kingdom’s_internal_market (this should prob'ly be 'of the' U.K.) [note by Kwami]

A discussion is underway, on the talkpage, about merging to United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, so I am not attempting to move just now. I will watchlist the artcle, and keep an eye on it. I am afraid it might disturb/anger the debaters, if I jump in, just now.

• Will report back to you, when the above issues are resolved. Thanks, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 22:33, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Radioactive materials in nature

I saw that you were part of a discussion at the Science Ref Desk, regarding "Safe displays of highly radioactive isotopes". My understanding is that, of course, radioactive materials occur naturally, are mined and then changed by humans to produce more powerful substances. Can you direct me to articles that outline the history of the discovery of the basic substances? I can remember the names of radium, uranium and plutonium. Are these naturally-occurring radioactive ores? Are there others? Thanks! Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 01:55, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thorium and uranium, actually. Answered on your talk page. — kwami (talk) 00:16, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:Historical expanse of Ainu.png

A tag has been placed on File:Historical expanse of Ainu.png requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a missing or corrupt image or an empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. CptViraj (talk) 12:45, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:RM/TR

I have done the move request for you, if you have any more requests I’ll be happy to help. Please do any post move cleanup if necessary. Cheers Megan☺️ ^{Talk to the monster} 14:20, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 15:48, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

happY vowel in 'Daphne'

Hello there,

In 2018 I changed the final vowel of the pronunciation transcription in Daphne to /i/ from /iː/ on the basis that I, a northern British English speaker, pronounce it with [ɪ]. I’m backed up in my assertion that this is the happY vowel by the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (ˈdæf ni).

You reverted my change earlier this year with the comment "rv bad IPA fix". Can you explain what I'm missing here? Why is the happY vowel not appropriate in the WP transcription scheme here? (Ordinarily I'd just have re-made my change assuming it was a troll/someone confused about the IPA, but I recognize your name from previous pronunciation discussions.)

Daphne Preston-Kendal (talk) 07:43, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Daphne Preston-Kendal:. I was going by the OED, by the fact that Greek eta is normally pronounced /i:/, and also assumed that you might not know the difference (lots of editors don't). But I see that not only does Longman have /i/, but so does Lexico, which is based on the OED. Plus I would expect you to know how to pronounce your own name! I'll go ahead and change it back, so it's clear from the article history that we're in agreement. — kwami (talk) 08:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Chinese names for the asteroids

Kagami-san, have you seen zh:小行星列表/1-1000? I think you might like the massive calquing effort that obviously went into the seemingly standard names. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 11:36, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

(I don't know how far it goes up to, though. Asteroids 704, 944, 951, and 1000 all seem to be straight transliterations. And I can't find all the names in there. It's really cool though.) Double sharp (talk) 22:29, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It is. I wonder if someone's making all that up for WP, or if they're actually used? — kwami (talk) 01:22, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

The source definitely seems legit to me, but I couldn't find all the names there (up to 117 they are all there; then it goes blank for all but a few). Looking at Google Scholar, it seems that at least some are only "theoretical" uses. The names for the first few are definitely used: Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta (Ceres and Vesta seem more popular and don't need the quotes, but maybe that's just because of Dawn). But for some (e.g. 48 Doris, 87 Sylvia) I get no results at all. The dwarf planets do get names that seem to be used in practice: 阋神星 (Eris), 鸟神星 (Makemake), etc. But it seems that usage of many of these is merely "theoretical": even if they appear in the dictionary, nobody seems to actually use them.

I did find this article from the same cite as the dictionary. It's in Chinese (wouldn't be surprised if you can read that given all you know), but it's already quite interesting. (If you can't see the text, copy-paste it into a Word document; it works for me then.) It starts with a history of the discoveries – but while it uses the standard names for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, when discussing the Kuiper belt discoveries it simply transliterates Quaoar, Sedna, and Orcus. Apparently the argument over what to do for these names arose for Eris: should the name be translated, or transliterated? Transliteration would certainly keep the source in mind, but it would go against history, when the largest and most interesting asteroids tended to get calques. Unfortunately they don't say for how long this was done, so I don't know if the names of the first hundred-ish asteroids are actually old, or if they are retroactive additions from a later decision that asteroids with low numbers probably pass the "interesting" bar regardless of whether they are astronomically interesting or not.

So, it was eventually decided to calque Eris as 阋神星. But judging from what I see on Google searches, it seems that unless you have a particularly interesting minor planet, no one is going to use the name. (Which is just as well, as I don't know what would have been done once the names started becoming less mythological like 210 Isabella.) So, I guess not all of them are made up, but actual usage seems to be in short supply. What about the names above 117 that I couldn't find elsewhere – I don't know. Originally the citations were only up to 100; I added up to 117 from the same site, but two didn't match (105 Artemis and 115 Thyra; I changed them to match). So there may be grounds for suspicion that some are made up following the pattern in the absence of an RS, but I really couldn't say since just appearing in an RS does not seem to mean anything for making people actually use the names. Double sharp (talk) 11:00, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

P.S. Obviously the most important data point: use of the first 4 asteroid names to translate Sailor Ceres and friends. XD Double sharp (talk) 11:11, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Obviously! — kwami (talk) 03:08, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Taa consonant section

What did you do to the consonant section of the Taa language? Why did I see symbols that looked like this [ˬd̪̥ʰ] rather than this [d̪̥ʰ]? Are they voiced? Or devoiced? I have since then reverted your edit. Fdom5997 (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Please don't change things you don't understand. Those consonants are prevoiced, as the article explains, not devoiced as you had them. You might also transcribe that as [d̪t̪ʰ], but [d̪̥ʰ] is the same as [t̪ʰ], which is a different consonant. — kwami (talk) 05:54, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Calm down, jeez

Jeez man, calm down.I used Celestia to take that picture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamin Borg (talk • contribs) 16:32, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

You didn't take that picture with Celestia. It's not a 'picture' at all. And you falsely attributed it.

BTW, people have been thanking me for reverting your edits. — kwami (talk) 10:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Fine, I admit I was wrong to do it, sorry. - Benjamin Borg (talk) 13:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Planetary Body

Hi,

you merged today the article Planetary object with Geophysical definition of 'planet'.

I find the merger a bit sudden, dont you think it deserves a discussion.

For example if merging, wouldnt the Planet article be better since it has a subsection regarding and referencing planetary mass objects.

I personally think it deserves an own article. Nsae Comp (talk) 13:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Sure, if there had been an article on the topic, but there wasn't. The "article" was nothing more than Stern's definition from 2002, which does not deserve its own article. It was more like a subdefinition of a Wiktionary entry.

As for where it should be, you may be correct that it would be better at 'planet', and others have suggested that. However, there's pushback form editors who insist we need balance with the 'IAU def of planet' article -- if one has its own article, then they both need to. I don't accept that myself, but I don't feel it's worth the argument. — kwami (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Woulnt it be better in that case to just mark it as needing additional content, instead of merging? Nsae Comp (talk) 13:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

No, because it isn't a separate topic. We also had a 'planemo' article on the same topic that was merged a few years ago. (Though both titles should probably link to the same article.) And it's been around for 7 yrs. If nothing's significant has been added in that time, and no-one's bothered to fix the incoming links in the past 5 yrs, there obviously isn't much need for it.

Whether it should be a separate article from 'planet' I leave to others. But IMO if there is a separate article on the topic, there should only be one.

But maybe you're right about it redirecting to 'planet', same treatment as 'planetary-mass object' (which has rd'd there for the last 5 yrs) and linking to the geophysical def article from there. Let's try that. — kwami (talk) 13:21, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

In my optinion you could also say since the article stayed for 7 yrs it has some legitimacy. In any case merging it without any discussion unilateraly is quite sweeping. Nsae Comp (talk) 14:14, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

But it wasn't an encyclopedia article. A Wikiquote, maybe, or Wiktionary definition. Only marginally belonged in WP per NOTADICTIONARY. — kwami (talk) 22:54, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for trying a different solution. Nsae Comp (talk) 14:15, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Phonological info on various languages

I would possibly proofread a lot or all of the phonological charts/information that you have given on various language pages. I just saw that you forgot a /j/ glide consonant for the Akan language. I just fixed it, and added a source provided. Also, is there a way that I can view all of the language pages that you provided information on? Fdom5997 (talk) 21:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is going through my user contributions and filtering by "language".

Not sure if I forgot the /j/ or if it wasn't in the source I used. — kwami (talk) 23:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, for some reason I tried that, and it did not work. It wasn't showing any results. Fdom5997 (talk) 02:11, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I dunno. Try tech help. There must be a way to do it. (And let me know if you find out!) — kwami (talk) 04:37, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Koli language

Hello. Please can you help fix the links to new dab Koli language? It's not obvious to the layman whether they mean Kachi Koli language or something else. Thanks, Certes (talk) 15:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Solar System invitation

Thank you for your recent contributions to one of Wikipedia's articles related to the solar system. Given the interest you've expressed by your edits, have you considered joining WikiProject Solar System? We are a group of editors dedicated to improving the overall coverage of the solar system on Wikipedia. If you would like to join, simply add your name to the list of participants. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask at the project talk page. We look forward to working with you in the future! --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:31, 24 October 2020 (UTC) --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:41, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Apostrophe 3

Just found this list today, sorry...happy to work, sorry for the delay Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 04:46, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Hey, no worries. No rush. — kwami (talk) 04:48, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls worldwide updates

hey Concerning the edits and updates on the page Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls worldwide

I noticed that these same updates were not done on the following: Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls Asia Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls Europe Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls Americas and Template:Same-sex marriage opinion polls Oceania

there is a big discrepancy in the numbers between a country in the worldwide pafe and americas for example. would you be kind and take care of it when you have time sorry to ask i'm just so uch busy now with studies thank you Agaywithnorights (talk) 01:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't know we had those. Why bother? Duplicate tables just produce problems like you caught. Easier to add 'region' to the master table. — kwami (talk) 04:14, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Sources for pronunciations

Hi, I notice that you've been adding pronunciations to quite a few articles on my watchlist. They should be sourced. E.g. /strɛpˈtɒfɪtə/; in careful speech I say /ˈstrɛptoʊfɪtə/ (British English). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Most of them are supported by the OED/Lexico or MW, others by the regular pronunciation of Latinate words. If you have an irregular pronunciation, such as /ˈstrɛptoʊfɪtə/ (not sure how that would be British English), you could always add sources for those. Though in this case I take your point -- the irregular pronunciation of words ending in -phyta is so common (both in the US and the UK) that it should be given as well. (Though the usual UK vowels, at least according to the OED/Lexico, are -/faɪtə/, with optional but common dropping of the penultimate stress as you have it.) — kwami (talk) 05:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't notice the /ɪ/ as I was concentrating on the stress and the /oʊ/. I say /ˈstrɛp·toʊ·faɪtə/ in careful speech. My point, though, was that explicit inline sources should be given for all pronunciations. I'm reluctant to go through and mark your contributions with {{citation needed}}, but it is justified. Please source pronunciations you add. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Username etymology

Where did you get your username? It's a really lovely name :) 49.144.193.13 (talk) 10:42, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) It's explained on his old user page: The name Kwami is an Ashanti name for a man born on a Saturday. 鏡 Kagami is a Japanese pun on my surname. Double sharp (talk) 11:57, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I see. Interestingly, in the TV show Miraculous Ladybug, there is a character called Kagami and a race of mystical creatures called kwamis! I got a good laugh when I saw his name for the first time! 49.144.193.13 (talk) 00:36, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

"Kagami" also has the advantage of being a rather uncommon Japanese name, which is nice given that my actual name is so tediously common, though it looks like the cartoon character indeed has the same name (same 鏡 on WP-ja). Can't tell if there's any Ashanti connection to the kwamis, though. — kwami (talk) 05:44, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

But can I call you Kyou-chan like in Lucky Star episode 10? (From another reading of 鏡, naturally.) Or would you like that Kagami prefer Kagami-sama (at least until it was actually used?). XD Double sharp (talk) 14:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

"-sama" is overly formal. If you must use it, I think the appropriate form would be "Kisama", but my friends call me "Baka". — kwami (talk) 22:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Maybe I did not make it clear, but my whole comment was a reference. Not sure how to link it to you without violating copyrights, but search "Lucky Star suggesting nicknames" and you'll probably find it. I do know of course how overly formal "-sama" is. As well as the not-so-respectful meaning of "kisama", indeed. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 01:53, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Origin of Hangul

By the way, Origin of Hangul seems to have gotten a nationalist (and inconsistent) twist this year. I'd correct it, but you are surely much more knowledgeable. --Macrakis (talk) 23:17, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 23:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Tahquitz (disambiguation)

Since you have previously updated a related article, you might be interested in knowing there is a discussion regarding the Tahquitz (disambiguation) page. The discussion is at Talk:Tahquitz (disambiguation). OvertAnalyzer (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC) Thanks! — kwami (talk) 18:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Hyphens

Re the discussion on Talk:Magnetic-core memory, what is the right place to discuss MOS:HYPHEN? It doesn't point to a main article, and the MOS FAQ and MOS extended FAQ don't mention hyphens. I've found a few discussions scattered through the MOS archives dating to 2011 or so, but it's not clear how to pick up the discussion. Thanks, --Macrakis (talk) 23:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I would think at WP:MOS, since that's where it's covered. It's been so long since I've been in these debates that I don't recall if there's another location. — kwami (talk) 23:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

So I should start a new discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style without referring to the old discussions? It's a pity that we don't seem to have a mechanism for summarizing past discussions in a cumulative, concise way. --Macrakis (talk) 23:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Certainly refer to them. Could they be copied to [[Talk:MOS:HYPHEN]], even though it's a redirect? Or would that be even more obscure? — kwami (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I assume you know this, but just in case I thought I should note that (for those who make the distinction) "magnetic core memory" and "magnetic-core memory" are pronounced differently, so it's not an arbitrary convention. — kwami (talk) 03:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I understand the old prescriptive grammar rule, I really do. I even have some fondness for it. But it doesn't seem to be used in practice. Think of <ice cream cone> or <foreign policy issue> or <French history professor>. That last one is genuinely ambiguous -- "professor of French history" and "French professor of history" are both reasonable interpretations, but <French-history professor> is rarely seen. Then there are French French-history professors, say Stanley Hoffmann, though technically he was a political scientist and not a historian. --Macrakis (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I know you understand the rule, but not everyone is aware that it reflects a spoken difference. (Someone commented recently that it doesn't matter because there's no difference in pronunciation.)

There is a tendency for common phrases to not be hyphenated, just as "high school" is written as two words despite being pronounced as one. But with more technical language, where there's a greater chance of misunderstanding, you see more hyphens. As an encyclopedia, I think WP should err on the side of precision. — kwami (talk) 18:56, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I'll start the discussion the on the MOS. My main point is that we should be guided by actual practice in reliable sources, not a priori grammatical rules.

Yes, "ice cream" functions as a single phonological word; are you suggesting that "foreign policy" or "French history" do as well? How about "economic policy", "Trump administration (policy)", "pre-Roman history (professor)", etc.?

As for the spoken difference, it can be subtle enough that the normal cues (stress, pitch contour) distinguishing "French (history professor)" and "(French history) professor" need to be consciously exaggerated it if you want to be clear, maybe by adding a /ʔ/ or a pause to underline the phrase boundaries. --Macrakis (talk) 20:35, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Why would you think "foreign policy" is a single word? "Ice cream" is pronounced (and sometimes written) as one word, "foreign policy" as two.

The differences don't need to be exaggerated. Any child can distinguish them. The problem is that English doesn't have a complete or consistent way to write prosody, so we don't learn how to do it well.

Actual practice, sure, but we don't want random differences based on contradictory conventions in different sources. The sources are internally consistent (at least if they're edited well), so why would an encyclopedia be intentionally inconsistent? — kwami (talk) 23:39, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

"Foreign policy" is clearly not a single word, so "foreign policy issues" doesn't fall into the "ice cream cone" category of exceptions to the hyphen rule. But the hyphenated form is uncommon nowadays (< 5%). It was the more common form until about 1918 according to Google nGrams, and has been below 10% since about 1960. So there seems to be clear evidence in another case that the hyphen rule is no longer widely followed. This is not a "random difference". Very few three-word phrases of this kind are more often hyphenated than not in the Google Books corpus -- I tried "mobile phone company", "life insurance policy", etc.; "random access memory" is a bit of an outlier, at about 17% hyphenation, though still much less than 50%.

All this taken together with the ngrams results for the specific case of "magnetic core memory" and its usage in journal titles seems pretty compelling to me. --Macrakis (talk) 20:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

But when you make it attributive, it *is* pronounced as a single word. That's the reason for hyphenating -- it's pronounced like a hyphenated lexical word, so the same orthographic convention is used.

As for it not being a common convention any more, that's a discussion for changing the MOS. Regardless, we should follow the MOS, whatever we decide there, for orthographic conventions like this, so that we're consistent across WP, just as any profesional publication would try to be internally consistent. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I will bring up at Talk MOS. In the meantime, we don't seem to be applying this rule very broadly or consistently. Reviewing a random sample of three-word article titles (excluding redirects and those including proper names), I see: political feasibility analysis, Category:brand name condiments, voice onset time, new wave music (vs. New-age music, definitely a case where consistency would be good), heavy metal lyrics, diffused lighting camouflage, integral field spectrograph, shared services center, visual pathway lesions, angular momentum problem, air traffic control, ...; though there are some that do respect the hyphenation rule: second-language phonology, X-class frigate/destroyer/..., public-key cryptography, random-access memory, Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns, etc. Do you believe that all in the first category should be moved? --Macrakis (talk) 21:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I do, assuming I'm not misinterpreting any of them.

Most WP conventions are only sporadically applied, like overlinking or curly quotes. I did a search for articles with curly quotes or the ASCII ` convention in their titles, and got over 1,000 hits. — kwami (talk) 21:59, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Just yesterday I came across an attributive phrase written as a single word but not hyphenated, equivalent to "heavymetal lyrics". Wish I'd written it down. — kwami (talk) 19:42, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Cistercian numerals

Hello! Your submission of Cistercian numerals at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 18:49, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Please see new note on your DYK nomination. Yoninah (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Are you coming back to this nomination or should it be closed as unsuccessful? Yoninah (talk) 15:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

What's left? Refs weren't duplicated when a para was split -- anything else? — kwami (talk) 23:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

citation info

Hi, i've adapted one of the pama-nyungan maps for a forthcoming publication and need to provide citation info for the publisher. are they your original work (and if so do we cite Kwamikagami under a CC license?) Happy to show you what it looks like but effectively just the map of the continent with Yolŋu, Arandic & Thura-Yura highliighted within PN. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jishphil (talk • contribs) 20:04, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi. I just colored in an existing Commons map a bunch of times. No original work involved. It looks like the original Commons map was copied from R. M. W. Dixon Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development, 2002, so I would check if that's correct and, if so, cite Dixon for the map.

If what you're asking is the scope/membership of those language families, please clarify. — kwami (talk) 01:47, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh right, if this is the map you're referring to, it does kind of look like Dixon's "master map" on page xviii. I'll mention this to the editor/publisher. Thanks so much for your reply Jishphil (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Jupiter Featured article review

I have nominated Jupiter for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Exaggerated number of native speakers

Hi. Could you take a look at this? Jumped from 23 million to 45-50 million.[17] It does not even match with the total population of that specific ethnic group. Cheers! --Wario-Man (talk) 04:44, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Wario-Man: Yeah, falsified data. Could you check that nothing worthwhile got caught up in the revert? — kwami (talk) 04:53, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Most of those sources are about the ethnic population not actual number of speakers. Plus that user misrepresented them. I don't have access to Ethnologue to see true stats. It seems it was updated in 2019. Plus Qashqai language is not a dialect/variety of Azerbaijani, so it should be removed too. --Wario-Man (talk) 04:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I just checked Ethn, and they haven't changed their numbers. (14M + 9M.) If Qashqai is included in the article, then it should be included in the pop stats. 05:04, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

As I know, both Ethn and Glottolog classify Qashqai as a separate language of Oghuz family; e.g. see Glottolog.[18][19] --Wario-Man (talk) 05:15, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Irrelevant. If we have Qashqai in the article, then the pop figure needs to reflect that. If we have a map showing it in country A, we can't say it's in county B. We need to be consistent. — kwami (talk) 05:18, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

The native speakers of those languages are two different ethnic groups. Honestly it only confuses our readers when they compare Azerbaijanis vs. Qashqai people, and Azerbaijani language vs. Qashqai language. You better review both articles. Cheers! --Wario-Man (talk) 05:25, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Ethnicity is also irrelevant. People of different ethnicities speak Arabic and French, but we don't call them different languages because of that. — kwami (talk) 05:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Cistercian numerals

On 27 December 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Cistercian numerals, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the Cistercian monastic order created an early competitor to Hindu–Arabic numerals with which they wrote years as a single character? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Cistercian numerals. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Cistercian numerals), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Cistercian numerals

Hey, just wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed the article about Cistercian numerals. Very interesting! Yakikaki (talk) 09:04, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Glad to hear it! — kwami (talk) 22:35, 27 December 2020 (UTC)